
Class. 
Book 



COPYRJCHT DEPOSIT 



THE STORY OF THE STATES 

EDITED JiY 

ELBKIDGE S BROOKS 



THE STORY OF THE STATES 



H V "^ 



THE STORY OF WISCONSIN 



REUBEN GOLD THWAITES 




Illustrations by L T Bridgman 




BOSTON 

D LOTHROP COMPANY 

WASHINGTON OPPOSITE BROMFIKLD STREET 



\ 



V 



V 



s%\ 



■X5^ 



CorvKicHT, 1890, 

1!Y 
D. LOTHKOP COMI'ANY. 



Pbbsswork by Berwick & Smith, 
Boston, U.S.A. 



PREFACE. 



Wisconsin is situated at the head of the chain of Great 
Lakes. It is touched on the east by Lake Michigan, on the 
north by Lake Superior, on the west by the Mississippi, and is 
drained by interlacing rivers which so closely approach each 
other that the canoe voyager can with ease pass from one great 
water system to the other ; he can enter the continent at the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence and by means of numerous narrow port- 
ages in Wisconsin emerge into the south-flowing Mississippi 
and eventually return to the Atlantic through the Gulf of 
Mexico. From Lake Michigan, the Fox-Wisconsin river system 
was the most popular highway to the great river ; into Lake 
Superior, there flow numerous streams from whose sources led 
short portage trails over to the headwaters of feeders of the 
Mississippi. In their early voyages to the head, of lake navi- 
gation, it was in the course of nature that the French should 
discover Wisconsin ; and having discovered it, soon learn that 
it was the key-point of the Northwest and the gateway to the 
mysterious " River of the Southern Sea." 

Thus the geographical character of Wisconsin became, very 
early in the history of New France, an important factor. The 
trading posts and Jesuit missions on Chequamegon Bay of 
Lake Superior, and on Green Bay of Lake Michigan, soon 
played a prominent part in the hrstory of American explora- 
tion. Two and a half centuries ago, when the Puritan 
colonies on Massachusetts Bay were yet in their infancy, and 
long before much of the intervening country liad been visited 



rUEFACE. 

by white men, the oencrnl features of the mnp of Wisconsin 
and the route thither were familiar to the rulers of Quebec. 

Wisconsin was notable, too, in those early clays, as a hiding 
place for tribes of Algonkiiis who had been driven beyond 
Lake Michigan before the resistless onslaught of the Iroquois, 
who, however, often ventured into these forest fastnesses and 
massacred the crouching fugitiv^es. The country was, for a 
century and a half, a happy hunting-ground for the easy-going 
French — licensed traders and lourcurs de hois as well. In the 
French-and-Indian war it was a favorite recruiting field for 
those disciplined bands of redskins who periodically broke forth 
upon the borders, filling the life of American pioneers with 
scenes of horror. And it was a Wisconsin leader of these 
savage allies of the French, who caught Braddock in his 
slaughter pen and whose swarthy fellows bore away to their 
rude lodges in the trans-Michigan woods a goodly share of the 
scalps and spoils won by them on that fateful day. 

When New France fell, Wisconsin — now a part of the 
Province of Quebec — remained essentially French. The fiag 
of England waved over the rude stockade at Green Bay, but the 
woods were filled with French and Indians in all grades of 
blood relationship, who had transferred their allegiance to the 
conqueror. French and half-bloods, throughout the War of 
the Revolution, wore the scarlet uniforms of officers in His 
Majesty's army. Wisconsin was again a recruiting ground, and 
the self-same savages who ambushed Braddock were sent out 
against the colonial borderers or against George Rogers Clark 
in his expedition for the conquest of the Northwest. 

Although the Northwest was given to the United States in 
the treaty of 1783, the English were practically in military 
possession of Wisconsin until the close of the war of 181 2-15. 
But the French and half-bloods still held her woods and 
streams, and the fur-trade was the chief industry. Little by 



PREFACE. 

little, this French predominance was undermined; at first by 
the advent of Americans into the lead mines, then by agricult- 
ural settlers. The Black Hawk War was largely instrumental 
in opening the region to public view. American colonization, 
and development along American lines, now began in earnest. 
The fur-trade ceased to be of importance, the non-progressive 
French element subsided into insignificance, and thenceforth 
Wisconsin was an American territory which rapidly grew into 
a powerful and patriotic State. 

The story of the lung and checkered career of Wisconsin, is 
replete with suggestive and romantic incidents. Necessarily, 
a treatment of the topic from a picturesque standpoint must 
chiefiy dwell upon the romantic pioneer period. A Western 
State, after reaching maturitv, progresses upon pretty much the 
same lines as kindred commonwealths, and no longer furnishes 
a unique story. This will account for the fact that the for- 
mative epochs receive by far the most generous recognition in 
this volume. 

I am indebted to Professor Frederick J. Turner, of the Univer- 
sity of Wisconsin, for assistance in the revision of proof-sheets, 
and for many helpful suggestions. To General David Atwood, 
Major Frederick L. Phillips, Professor Albert O. Wright, Gen- 
eral Edwin E. Bryant, Doctor Lyman C. Draper and Professor 
Jesse B. Thayer, my thankful acknowledgments are also due, for 
valuable aid. Mr. James S. Buck has been so kind as to give 
me the privilege to freely appropriate any of the wood-cuts in 
his excellent Pioneer History of Mihvaukee, and one or two of 
these the artist has taken the liberty to use as a basis for his 
own sketches. 



(Ml . Aw^^c-^L. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

IN THE BEGINNING II 

CHAPTER II. 
DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI ..... 36 

1658-1673. 

CHAPTER HI. 

EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS OF NEW FRANCE . . 61 

1674-1760. 

CHAPTER IV. 

UNDER THE BRITISH FLAG ...... 89 

1761-1783. 

CHAPTER V. 

ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. . , . . II9 

1783-1815. 

CHAPTER VI. 

WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED .... 149 

1815-1836. 

CHAPTER VII. 

TERRITORIAL DAYS ....... I93 

1836-1855. 



CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER VIII. 

" BARSTOW AND THE BALANCE " . 

1S44-1856. 

CHAPTER IX. 

SPOTS ON THE ESCUTCHEON . 

1854-1856. 

CHAPTER X. 

WISCONSIN ON A WAR FOOTING 

1860-1865. 



DEEDS OF VALOR 



CHAPTER XI. 

1860-1866. 
CHAPTER XII. 



SINCE THE WAR 



THE CHRONOLOGICAL STORY . 
THE people's COVENANT 
BOOKS RELATING TO WISCONSIN 
INDEX . 



230 



247 



70 



291 



369 

379 
3S3 
387 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Coming to a session of the Territorial Legislature 

A Winnebago chief. Initial 

Nicolet and the Winnebagoes . 

Robert de la Salle. Initial 

In the Wisconsin forest 

A Wisconsin home in the old days . 

Relics of Jesuit and voyageur. Initial 

The Griffin 

Milwaukee in 1795. Initial 

The perils of the frontier . 

Solomon Juneau. Initial 

In the British camp .... 

The old Legislative Building at Belmont 

Black Hawk. Initial 

Indians attacking a stockade 

Governors Dodge and Doty. Initial 

" King Strang " and his saints . 

Governors Bashford and Barstow. Initial 

By lake and river .... 

The State Capitol .... 

Governor Dewey. Initial 

Some Wisconsin scenery . 

Governor Randall. Initial 

Answering the President's call . 

Stanley and Oskhosh. Initial . 

Charging the Battery 

On the line of battle .... 

In La Crosse. Initial 

Picturesque Milwaukee 



Frontispiece. 



II 
21 

36 

42' 

53 

61 

111 
89 
103 
119 
127 ' 
141 
149 
165 

193 
209 
231 

243 
247 

257 
270 
279 
291 
=95 
309 
330 
^345 



THE STORY OF WISCONSIN 



CHAPTER I. 



IN THE BEGINNING. 




A 



A Wi^convn 
Vy innebago. 



LAURENTIAN is- 
land, almost alone 
amidst a world of 
waters, such if scien- 
tists read her rocks 
aright, was the begin- 
ning of the State of 
Wisconsin. Geolo- 
gists say that a con- 
siderable portion of 
the area of the State (the whole northern third) 
had doubtless risen from the ancient ocean before 
much else of the American continent, and while 
most of Europe was still submerged. Thus its 
story reaches back to almost the days of " Chaos and 
old Night." Lofty mountains occupied the pres- 
ent plains of Central Wisconsin — peaks which 
pierced the clouds and rivaled the Himalayas of 



12 IN THE BEGINNING. 

our day. But the waves of the ahnost shoreless 
ocean beat against their bases, the elements disin- 
tegrated their peaks, and rivers furrowed their 
slopes, these leveling processes being interrupted 
by intermittent periods of submergence ; until at 
last, after a series of such remarkable movements, 
lasting throusfh as^es of unknown and unknowable 
length, and after the entire continent had emerged 
and taken form, the irresistible glacier came upon 
Wisconsin from the north, " planing down the 
prominences, filling up the valleys, polishing and 
grooving the strata, and heaping up its rubbish of 
sand, gravel, clay and bowlders over the face of the 
country." 

One monster tongue of ice pushed through the 
valleys of the Fox and Rock rivers, another plowed 
the bed of L?ke Michigan, while two others separa- 
ted by Keweenaw Point moved southward and west- 
ward through the trough of Lake Superior into 
Wisconsin and Minnesota. The territory em- 
braced in Southwestern Wisconsin was alone left 
intact. This was the unique " driftless area," the 
wonder of American geologists. 

The thousands of depressions scooped out by 
the mighty fioes, when they rudely tore their way 
through the land, were filled with water upon the 
melting of the ice, thus giving rise to the beautiful 
Wisconsin lakes, isolated and in chains, with their 



IN THE BEGINNING. 1 3 

picturesque river outlets. " With the retreat of 
the glacier, vegetation covered the surface, and by 
its aid and the action of the elements our fertile 
drift soils, among the last and best of Wisconsin's 
formations, were produced ; and the work still goes 
on." * 

Man then came upon the scene. How long 
after, no one knows, but his coming opens the next 
chapter in Wisconsin's progress. Its details are 
lost in mystery, although scientific investigation 
and ingenious conjecture have of late framed for 
us a reasonable hypothesis. 

Upon the level benches of noble streams, upon 
ridge tops, upon the summits of commanding bluffs, 
upon the sloping banks of both inland and Great 
Lakes, there are in Wisconsin many thousands of 
artificial earthworks that have attracted the atten- 
tion of whites since the time of the European con- 
quest. Some are mere hemispherical tumuli ; 
others are grotesque in shape, and it does not re- 
quire a great stretch of imagination to discover 
among them the rude outlines of birds, beasts, fishes 
and reptiles, the predominating forms being aopar- 
ently those of the turtle, the lizard, the snake, the bird, 
the squirrel, the deer and the buffalo,! while not a 

* President T. C. Chamberlin, in Snyder, Van Vechten & Co.'s " Historical Atlas of 
Wisconsin " (Milwaukee, 187S), p. 151. 

t The so-called " elephant " mtjund, in Grant County, over which there has been so much 
speculation, is very likely but a distorted buffalo, the prolongation of the nose probably being 
occasioned by a land-slide. 



14 IN THE BEGINNING. 

few maybe likened to men and even to implements 
of war< such as the club and the spear. Again, 
there are parallel lines, with circles and corners, and 
within sucli earthworks as these are often isolated 
mounds of considerable height. The best example 
of this latter class of structure is the field of Azta- 
Ian near the village of Lake Mills, in Jefferson 
County, where are to be found prehistoric ruins of 
a character quite similar to the famous works at 
Marietta, Ohio, presumably familiar to our readers. 
The effigy mounds of Wisconsin are, however, 
unique. 

There has been a vast amount of literature pub- 
lished concerning the mounds of the United States, 
and those in Wisconsin have received particular 
attention. Much of what has appeared, however, 
has been the product of lively and romantic imag- 
ination. It has been sturdily maintained that 
because the Indians whom the whites first met 
generally claimed to be ignorant of the origin of 
these earthworks; because the Indians of our day 
do not build mounds ; and because nothing in the 
customs or beliefs of modern Indians appears upon 
sujDcrficial examination to be connected with the 
practice of mound building, that the prehistoric 
mounds were built by another and a singular race 
of men. 

It has been held that the builders of the mounds. 



IN THE BEGINNING. I 5 

coming from the mysterious north, commenced 
their most active labors in the Upper Mississippi 
valley and were gradually driven southward and 
eastward before the inroads of our modern Indians, 
until at last this mystic people made stand in 
Mexico, the progenitors of the Aztecs whom 
Cortez conquered, and the Pueblos who have sur- 
vived to our own time. 

This theory has been so persistently advanced 
for the past half-century, that doubtless the 
greater part of the reading public have at last come 
to accept it as an established historical fact. As to 
the purposes for which the mounds were built, spec- 
ulation has been rife, each set of theorists adopt- 
ing in their writings a descriptive terminology to 
agree with their peculiar notions, thereby giving 
rise to much confusion. 

Some would have us believe that the mounds 
were totems of the several clans — a sort of native 
heraldry ; others imagine the mounds to have been 
built almost solely for purposes of worship, others 
for defense, others as symbols of mystic rites in 
which human sacrifice and sun worship played 
prominent parts, others as cemeteries and sites 
for dwellings. 

It has remained, however, for the United States 
Bureau of Ethnology to dispel much of the fog of 
romance which has heretofore enveloped the long- 



1 6 IN THE BEGINNING. 

mooted question of '' Who were the Mound-build- 
ers ? " For several years past, competent special- 
ists have been engaged in the work of mound 
exploration upon a scientific basis, in various sec- 
tions of the country. It has been discovered that 
many mounds, heretofore supposed to be of great 
antiquity, contained articles of European manufac- 
ture at their base, undoubtedly placed there when 
the mounds were erected. 

The conclusion has been reached after careful 
investigation, that there was nothing in the habits 
or character of the Mound-builders, so far as the 
excavations show, which necessarily divorce them 
from the Indians whom the whites first met. That 
burial and dwelling-site mounds were erected, 
notably in the Southern States, after the advent of 
Europeans, is well established by the journals of 
many of the earliest travelers, who carefully de- 
scribed these works, the manner of building them 
and the curious customs then in vogue among the 
savages relative to burial and sun worship. Several 
early explorers have stated that traditions relative 
to these mounds were abundant among some of the 
tribes, for instance the Cherokees, the Kaskaskias 
and the Creeks ; and that old men attributed 
the erection of the works to their ancestors. 

It is not a unique fact in human history that the 
Indian came to abandon their ancient custom of 



IN THE BEGINNING. 17 

mound building. The people of Egypt no longer 
fashion pyramids and sphinxes, yet the descendants 
of the builders of these mysterious structures still 
live in the country ; the people of England no longer 
build abbeys, yet no one will deny that the 
descendants of the abbey builders still live within 
sio^ht of the olden ruins. 

The Indians dropped many of their customs and 
rites with the advent of the whites : for instance, 
the maintenance of a perpetual fire in each village, 
an evidence in itself of sun worship ; they came no 
longer to manufacture wampum and implements and 
utensils of copper, flint and clay ; in the matter of 
clothing, it was not long before European articles 
of dress became common among them ; while their 
habits of daily life were at last so altered by contact 
with the whites that they ceased to be self-reliant and 
were absolutely dependent on the invaders of their 
country for domestic utensils, weapons, tools, cloth- 
insf and often food. It is indeed remarkable how 
soon the imitative American savage abandoned 
many of the long-established customs and methods 
of his ancestors, for those of the whites. So 
complete has been the transformation, that to-day 
the old gossips of many of the Western tribes assert 
with earnestness that their ancestors neither made 
nor used flint arrow-heads, and that those plowed 
up in the fields and fondly treasured in museums, 



1 8 IN THE BEGINNING. 

were made and placed in the ground by spirits ; 
such is the value of Indian tradition, such the 
significance of the lack of it. 

The formal conclusion of the Bureau of Ethnol- 
ogy is, that " The links discovered directly con- 
nectino- the Indians and Mound-builders are so 
numerous and well established, that there should no 
longer be any hesitancy in accepting the theory 
that the two are one and the same people.'"* 

The Bureau inclines to the belief that Wisconsin 
was occupied by two or three different mound- 
building tribes of Indians, the effigies and the groups 
being probably traceable to Dakotan stock, of 
which the Winnebagoes are the modern representa- 
tives. There are reasons for believing that the 
Mound-builders came into the State from the 
southwest, ^^hrough Northern Iowa, and moved 
frequently back and forth between the Mississippi 
River and Lake Michigan, but that some opposing 
element kept them from advancing around the 



* " Work in Mouml Exploration," Bureau of Ethnology Report, 1887, p. ir. See also 
"The Mounds of the Mississippi Valley Historically Considered" (Kentucky Geological 
Survey Memoirs, Vol. 11.), by Lucien Carr of the Peabody Museum of Archaeologj' and 
Ethnology; "Who Built the Mounds?" by P. R. Hoy (Trans. Wisconsin Academy of 
Sciences, Art and Letters, Vol. VI.), and " Antiquities of Wisconsin " ( Smithsonian Contri- 
butions, 1855 ), by I. A. Lapham. 

" That tlie Mound-builders were Indians, pertaining to or ancestors of the tribes inhabi- 
tating this councry when discovered by Europeans, is now too well established to admit of a 
reasonable doubt. Those who question this conclusion are certainly not familiar with the 
evidence." — Cyrus Thomas, of the Bureau of Ethnology, in Miigazine 0/ American History, 
Sept., 1888, p. 193. 

See also, Gerard Fowke, on " Some Popular Errors in Regard to Mound-builders and 
Indians," in Ohio Archcpological and H istorical Quarterly , Vol. II. p. 3, and Winsor's Nar- 
rative and Critical }listory 0/ America, VtA. 1. Index. 



IN THE BEGINNING. 1 9 

south end of the lake. The most ancient works in 
Wisconsin, probably originating in a very distant 
past, appear to be the effigy and elongated mounds, 
the evidence being that their builders came after- 
wards to abandon these forms and erect only burial 
tumuli. Even this latter species they had pos- 
sibly abandoned before the advent of the whites, 
althoush the Illinois Indians who entertained Mar- 
quette practised in his presence the rites of the 
ancient sun worship, the undoubted religion of the 
Mound-builders. 

As to the use of the effigies and more compli- 
cated forms, antiquarians still disagree, but it has 
been quite generally concluded that the other 
shapes were mostly erected as sites for dwellings, 
council houses and worship huts, also for purposes 
of defense. Fortified villages were common among 
the Mound-builders, as among their descendants 
within historic times, and the evidences of ancient 
palisaded inclosures in Wisconsin are not in- 
frequent. 

The child born upon the Mayflower was but in 
her fourteenth year when Wisconsin entered upon 
the stage of history. It was in 1634 that Jean 
Nicolet, agent of the inquiring and politic Cham- 
plain, set foot upon Wisconsin soil, the first white 
man known to have visited the Old Northwest. 



20 IN THE BEGINNING. 

Champlain had planted his feeble colony of French 
Catholics upon the rock of Quebec, twenty-six 
years before, but progress into the far West had 
been necessarily slow. The search for peltries had 
led adventurous fur-traders to Georgian Bay and 
Lake Huron ; Recollet missionaries were, amidst 
a thousand lurking dangers, saying masses upon 
those distant shores and vainly endeavoring to 
bring the red men to a realizing sense of the 
enormity of their pagan rites;* while Champlain 
himself had, in 1615, ventured upon the waters of 
the great " Fresh Sea." But all beyond was, to 
the authorities of New France, an unknown land. 
It is possible that coureurs de bois, those lawless 
Canadian adventurers who became Indians in habit 
and prosecuted the fur trade far beyond all licensed 
bounds, had by this time pushed their way into the 
Lake Superior country; but if so they discreetly 
kept quiet about it and left no record behind. 

It had been reported to Champlain, by Western 
traders, that the Indians told of two lakes bevond 
that of Huron : of a large body of fresh water, at 
the outlet of which was a satilt, or rapids — after- 
wards ascertained to be the Lake Superior of our 
modern maps ; and of another lake that was smaller, 
styled by the Indians " Winnepegou," — the Winne- 
bago of our day, — while this smaller lake had a 

* Br^beuf's Jesuit mission was not begun until 1634. 



IN THE BEGINNING. 23 

river outlet, the Fox of later maps. Cbamplain had 
long wished to have this geographical mystery of 
the Northwest penetrated, and the Indians of that 
far-away region instructed in the benefits of religion 
and the fur-trade, for the love of Mammon had no 
small share in the missionary aspirations of the 
governors of New France. The opportunity at 
last came, and Jean Nicolet, interpreter at Three 
Rivers, was commissioned to undertake the haz- 
ardous enterprise. 

Nicolet was a native of Cherbourg, in Normandy, 
but emigrated to Canada in 16 18, when a young 
man. At that time, Champlain, filled with ambi- 
tious schemes of exploration, was in the practice of 
occasionally sending young men to live among dis- 
tant tribes of Indians to learn their languages and 
customs in order to be of service to him as inter- 
preters and explorers. Nicolet was one of the per- 
sons thus selected, and soon after his arrival at 
Quebec was dispatched first to the Algonkins on 
the Ottawa River and next to the Nipissings, on the 
lake which bears their name. Upon his return to 
the colony, after many years of intimate associ- 
ation with the savages, Nicolet was employed as 
interpreter at Three Rivers, where he acquired the 
reputation of being adroit in his management of 
the hordes of red men who annually assembled 
there from the upper country, for purposes of trade 



24 IN THE BEGINNING. 

and council. In 1634, this hardy adventurer was 
dispatched by the governor to visit the tribes 
dwelling upon the shores of the Winnepegou and 
other fresh-water seas of the Northwest, and 
endeavor to secure their good-will and their atten- 
dance upon the councils of the French on the 
lower St. Lawrence. 

Nicolet proceeded up the Ottawa River as far as 
the Isle des Allumettes, in company with Fathers 
Brebeuf, Daniel and Davost, Jesuit priests who 
were on their way to the Huron country to re- 
establish the mission commenced but afterwards 
abandoned by the Recollets. At the Isle, he 
parted company with his priestly comrades, and 
proceeded by way of Lake Nipissing and French 
Creek to Georgian Bay. He appears to have spent 
some time among the Hurons there, and finally to 
have secured seven men of the tribe to accompany 
him upon his voyage of discovery to the North- 
west. Nicolet was himself a demi-savage,. quite 
equal in endurance to any of his red companions 
and allowing none of them to outdo him in the 
weary task before them. In their long canoe of 
birch-bark, propelled solely by paddles, they slowly 
skirted the northern shores of Lake Huron ; upon 
their right the gloomy pine forest swept down in 
solemn grandeur to the water's edge or thickly 
mantled the towerino; bluffs, while to their left the 



IN THE BEGINNING. 25 

dark green waters stretched to the horizon in mys- 
tic sublimity. Their frail bark was often tossed 
about like a chip, in the white-capped swells which 
swept with but little warning around the awesome 
headlands. There were times when storms too 
severe even for Indian boatmen compelled them to 
camp upon the shore in the shelter of the woods, 
for days at a time, until the wind had gone down 
and the sea was again quiet. Thus, through storm 
and calm, they pursued their spasmodic voyage, 
picking up their food as they went along, from the 
sea and the forest, veritable children of nature 
alone in the mighty wilderness. There were no 
doubt times when the Hurons, unimpelled by the 
spirit of exploration or the hope of gain, wearied of 
their seemingly useless task, but Nicolet was fired 
by the zeal of his mission and could brook no 
human opposition to his progress. Finally, the 
shore lines led them through the North Channel to 
the outlet of Lake Superior, the Strait of St. Mary. 
A considerable distance up this strait, and fifteen 
miles below the foot of the Great Lake, they 
encountered the falls, where — on the site of the 
present thriving city of Sault Ste. Marie, in Upper 
Michioan — there was a considerable villas^e of Al- 
gonkins. Landing here, Nicolet, first of all recorded 
white men, set foot upon the soil of what a century 
and a half later became the Northwest Territory. 



26 IN THE BEGINNING. 

It is not known whether Nicolet ever saw Lake 
Superior, which was within a few hours' walk of the 
Aloonkin village. Probably he did not, as so notable 
a discovery would have been placed to his credit by 
his Jesuit admirers. It is certain, however, that he 
remained long enough at the falls to thoroughly 
refresh his men, whereupon the party again ventured 
forth, this time to the southward, seeking what they 
mi2;ht find. 

The voyage now became more fraught with inter- 
est to a lover of nature. Islands in great variety 
appeared upon either hand — great masses, the 
size of a German principality, densely covered with 
mighty forests of dark-hued pine and skirted by 
broad, glistening beaches of sand and bowlders; 
pretty islets, a few square miles in extent, with cool 
and inviting shades, indented with restful coves and 
crowned by rocky observatories of fantastic form ; 
low, barren patches of storm-swept rock, covered 
with lichens and scrub pine, telling tales of deadly 
struorofles with ice and wind and wave. Throuo:h 
this sylvan archipelago, Nicolet's bark threaded its 
way as rapidly as eight men could propel it, and in 
due time entered the Straits of Mackinaw; ascend- 
ing this now famous highway, the waters of Lake 
Michigan soon burst upon the sight of their first 
white discoverer. 

Closely skirting the northern coast of this inland 



IN 2'BE BEGINNING. 2 J 

sea, and frequently camping upon the edges of the 
deep forest which framed it, either to await the pas- 
sage of storms or refresh the weary crew, our in- 
trepid explorer finally rounded far-stretching Point 
Detour and beached his craft on the shores of Bay 
de Noquet, a northern arm of the great Green Bay. 
Here was another Algonkin tribe, with whom he 
smoked the pipe of peace, obtaining particulars 
from them of the country beyond. 

His next stopping place was the mouth of the 
river afterwards called Menomonee, from the tribe 
of Algonkins then inhabiting its valley ; this 
rugged stream, now one of the boundary lines 
between Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, is the 
principal northern affluent of Green Bay. He only 
tarried here long enough to hold a brief council 
with the Menomonees and dispatch one of his 
Hurons to herald his approach to the Winneba- 
goes who were established at the mouth of Fox 
River. 

Green Bay is shaped like a monster letter V ; 
it opens to the northeast, and the Fox River flows 
into it from the south, at the vertex of the angle. 
The western shores are now, as they were in Nico- 
let's time, low, irregular in outline and densely 
wooded with pine and tamarack, presenting a sin- 
gularly somber and depressing appearance; while 
the eastern banks are generally high, with many 



28 IN THE BEGINNING. 

bold headlands and abrupt slopes, well covered with 
both hard and soft woods. 

At Red Banks, so called from the red clay sub- 
soil predominant here, the height of the shore is 
about seventy-five feet sheer, the summit of this 
picturesque cliff of clay being crowned for some 
miles back into the country with interesting mounds. 
The Winnebagoes have a tradition that the Adam 
and Eve of their race first lived at Red Banks ; also 
that the French first visited the tribe at this place. 
The last half of the tradition we know to.be 
baseless. 

The bay is a wild and stormy estuary, much 
troubled by cross winds and cross tides,* and a 
dangerous passage for small craft ; but Nicolet, 
seizing the opportunity of favorable weather, pur- 
sued his venturesome way and soon came within 
sight of the enormous marshes of wild rice which 
bar the mouth of Fox River, vivid in their mass of 
changing greenery when swayed by the breeze and 
lightened by the sun. 

This was the day when the China Sea was sup- 
posed to be somewhere in the neighborhood of the 
Great Lakes, there being as yet no knowledge of 
the immense width of the American continent. 
Nicolet had heard when among the Nipissings, that 



* There is no longer any question of there being tides in Green Bay, but whether caused by 
the winds or by lunar affection is undecided. 



IN THE BEGINNING. 29 

at Green Bay he would meet a strange people, who 
had come from beyond " a great water" lying to 
the west. He was therefore prepared to find there 
a colony of Chinamen or Japanese, if indeed Green 
Bay were not the Orient itself. His mistake was a 
natural one, considering the crudity of the geo- 
graphical information then current. 

The " strange people " proved to be Winnebago 
Indians. A branch of the Dakotas, or Sioux, a 
distinct race from the Algonkins, they appear to 
have been stranded in Wisconsin, when the great 
body of their kin, probably the original Mound- 
builders, had withdrawn from the State to the 
trans-Mississippi country. They were as a wedge 
remaining in the heart of the Algonkin territory 
and long maintaining, despite all changes in political 
mastery, a firm foothold on the interlocked water- 
way of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. The "great 
water" spoken of by the Nipissings and supposed 
by Nicolet to mean the China Sea, was the Missis- 
sippi River, beyond which the Dakota race held full 
sway. 

The canoe was run into a cove just below the 
mouth of the Fox, and a short halt made while 
Champlain's forest ambassador attired himself in a 
gorgeous damask gown, decorated with gayly- 
colored birds and flowers, a ceremonial garment 
with which he had taken care to provide himself at 



30 IN THE BEGINNING. 

Quebec, expecting to meet mandarins who would 
be similarly dressed. As he stepped ashore, a short 
distance up the river, and thus, first of all Euro- 
peans, trod the soil of what is now Wisconsin, 
Nicolet was met by a horde of nearly naked Winne- 
basoes who hailed him as a Manitou, or " wonder- 
ful man." 

It must have been no small disappointment to 
the explorer to be thus met by breech-clouted sav- 
ages when he had fondly anticipated the formal 
greetings of Oriental courtiers. But the politic 
envoy smothered his chagrin and, the rustling skirts 
of his silken robe sweeping the ground, advanced 
boldly among the astonished barbarians, discharg- 
ing the pistols which he held in either hand. The 
warriors were much startled at this singular appari- 
tion, while women and children fled in terror from 
the Manitou who carried with him lightning and 
thunder. 

But after duly impressing them with the solem- 
nity of his mission, Nicolet soon doffed his fanciful 
costume and met the Winnebagoes in friendly 
council. The news of his arrival quickly spread to 
neiafhborins^ villao;es and tribes, and a Q-reat feast, 
was held, at which some four or five thousand 
Indians assembled, according to the old chronicle,* 
and devoured one hundred and twenty beavers with 

* Jesuit " Relation," 16.(3. 



IN THE BEGINNING. 3 1 

divers other viands. There was a great deal of 
proHx oratory in various tongues, accompanied by 
the exchange of wampum belts and other presents 
and the smoking of innumerable pipes of tobacco, 
with the usual result of an agreement on the part 
of the red men to forever keep the peace towards all 
Frenchmen. 

Leaving the Winnebagoes at the mouth of the 
Fox, Nicolet pursued his way up that stream. He 
was obliged to make portages around the falls of 
Des Peres, the two Kakalins, Grand Chute and 
Winnebago Rapids — where the cities of Depere, 
Kaukauna, Appleton and Neenah are located in 
our day. The Lower F'ox is a picturesque, deep 
and rapid stream. It flows between terraced, vine- 
clad banks which for the most part rise from twenty 
to fifty feet in height, varied now and then by park- 
like glades and bold, rocky bluffs. The river is 
now lined with prosperous towns whose numerous 
factories are dependent upon its abundant water- 
power. 

When Nicolet carried the banner of France 
along this dimpled flood, the valley was the seat of 
a considerable Indian population, there being vil- 
lages at each of the rapids and on Doty's Island, at 
the outlet of Lake Winnebago, while upon the 
table lands which stretch away on either side were 
large fields of maize ; for these people were thrifty. 



32 IN THE BEGINNING. 

as Indians go, placing their grain in caches for 
winter use and bartering their surplus with neigh- 
boring tribes. 

Emerging upon the broad expanse of Lake 
Winnebago, among the most charming of our 
Western inland waters, Nicolet cautiously wended 
his way from headland to headland, until at last he 
found the point where the Upper Fox empties its 
flood into the lake — a broad bay fringed with 
marshes of wild rice, beyond which rose gentle 
prairie slopes, backed on the horizon by agreeable 
oak openings. Where to-day is the city of Osh- 
kosh — with its thirty-odd thousand industrious 
inhabitants, the river lined with saw mills and their 
outlying rafts, their lines of piling, and their great 
yards of newly-sawn lumber — were then but a half- 
dozen Indian wigwams at the junction of the river 
and lake, a few canoes on the gravelly beach and 
elsewhere solitude. 

There is no record of Nicolet pausing here, 
afterwards a famous camping ground for French 
voyageiirs. He pushed on in search of the Mas- 
coutins, or Fire Nation, whose principal camp was 
still some thirty miles to the southwest, up the Fox. 
While the shores of the Fox below Lake Win- 
nebago are rugged and gloomy, and the dark pine 
forest closed in the view of the explorer as though 
solid ramparts lined his narrow path, the Upper 



IN THE BEGINNING. -i^^ 

Fox was alike depressing, although from another 
cause. 

The Indians have a tradition that the numerous 
rivers called by them Fox were so named because 
their winding paths resembled the course of a pur- 
sued fox. In regard to this particular Fox River, 
above Lake Winnebago, there is still another tale. 
The Upper Fox valley is for the most part an im- 
mense widespread tract of reeds, wild rice and willow 
clumps, with dark, forest-girt ridges hemming in 
the marshy expanse, through which the gleaming 
river doubles upon itself like a serpent in agony. 
The red men, who have an eye to the picturesque 
in Nature, tell us that once a monster snake lay 
down for the night in the swamp between the 
Wisconsin River portage and the Lake of the 
Winnebagoes. The dew accumulated upon it as it 
lay, and when the morning came it wriggled and 
shook the water from its back, and disappeared 
down the river which it had thus created in its 
nocturnal bed. 

Through this sedgy couch of the serpent, Nicolet 
pushed on, often losing his way in some vexatious 
cul-de-sac, obliged to retrace his steps with the 
frequent danger of mistaking a branch for the main 
channel ; for such was the height of the wall of 
reeds upon either side that it was impossible to 
overlook it even when standing upright in the 



34 IN THE BEGINNING. 

canoe, and the view was generally confined to the 
few rods of winding river ahead and astern. 

Above where Omro village now lies nestled upon 
a fertile bench which is hugged closely by the 
flood, cranberry bogs were first encountered. Near 
the present city of Berlin, in Green Lake County — 
in our day the seat of an extensive cranberry in- 
terest — prairies came down to the southern bank. 
Upon a clayey beach Nicolet stranded his canoe, 
for upon an eminence two miles or so south of the 
river * lay the palisaded town of the Mascoutins, 
the object of his search. 

Had Nicolet proceeded up the river he would in 
three days have reached the low plain of but a mile 
and a half in width, which, at the modern city of 
Portage, separates the waters of the Fox from the 
Wisconsin — a slight and often overflowed water- 
shed between the basins of the St. Lawrence and 
the Mississippi. Small exertion on his part, had 
he been aware of the fact, might have made him 
the first white discoverer of the Upper Mississippi. 
This was, however, reserved for others of his race. 
He went no farther west than the village of the 
Mascoutins, and then, having secured them to the 
French interest, took up his path over the prairies 
to the south and visited the nation of the Illinois, 



* Father Alloue?., who visited the Mascoutins in \(•^^o, locates tlie fort of these people a 
Krench league (2.4 English miles), " over beautiful prairies," to the south of the river. 



IN THE BEGINNING. 35 

returning to Quebec by the way of Lake Michigan 
the following year. 

Thus had the redoubtable Jean Nicolet pursued 
an amphibious journey of over two thousand miles 
through a trackless wilderness, won to New France 
the fealty of half a dozen heretofore unknown tribes 
and made the first step in the European conquest 
of Wisconsin and the Northwest. 



CHAPTER II. 



DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 




OON after the return 
of Nicolet and his 
resumption of duty 
at Three Rivers, 
the governor of New 
France, Samuel de 
Champlain, died at 
Quebec. It was on 
Christmas Day, 1635, 
that this fearless ge- 
nius passed away, and with him appeared to depart, 
for a time, the spirit of the colony. The Iroquois, 
whom Champlain had sadly offended, took advan- 
tage of the lack of military leadership in New 
France, to wreak their vengeance on the French 
and the Alo;onkin tribes that had communion 
with them. The Dutch traders at Albany, ever 
their firm friends, had plentifully supplied the Five 
Nations with fire-arms and ammunition, and these, 
the best-brained of American Indians, were soon 
a match for the finest shots in Canada. They 

36 



DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 37 

now began to repay the French in their own 
coin. 

The colonists were chased within their gates, and 
the Algonkin allies sadly harried, whole tribes 
beinof driven as far west as Wisconsin, with grreat 
slaughter and suffering. Exploration ceased for 
some years ; although in 1641 two Jesuit mission- 
aries, Isaac Jogues and Charles Raymbault, pro- 
ceeded on a tour of inspection as far as Sault Ste. 
Marie, following the path pointed out by Nicolet, 
and there preached to two thousand Ojibways and 
other Algonkins, who had been collected to meet 
the visitors. But Jogues was captured by the 
Iroquois, a year later, while on his return to the 
lower St. Lawrence, and Raymbault died about the 
same time, so nothing came of this adventurous 
expedition. 

There is no record of any white man being in 
Wisconsin between the autumn of 1634, when 
Nicolet made the initial canoe voyage up the Fox, 
and the winter of 1658-59. It was in the month 
of June, 1658, when Pierre d'Esprit, Sieur Radisson, 
set out with his sister's husband, Medard Chouart, 
Sieur des Groseilliers, upon a voyage up the 
Ottawa River to the far Northwest, determined "to 
travel] and see countreys." Radisson was already 
much of a traveler in savage wilds. In 1652, hav- 
ing been captured near his home in Three Rivers, 



38 DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 

by a band of marauding Iroquois, he was adopted 
into the Mohawk tribe ; but he finally made his 
escape to the Dutch at Albany and sailed to 
Holland, returning to Three Rivers in 1654. In 
1657, he went with the Jesuits Ragueneau and 
Du Peron to their Onondaga mission, which was 
clandestinely abandoned during the night of March 
20, 1658, hardly three months before his departure 
for the Northwest, in the company of Groseilliers. 

Seven years later, when these two adventurers 
offered their services to King Charles II., to open 
up Hudson's Bay to English fur-trading interests — 
they were alternately employed under the flags of 
Great Britain and France, as fancy or their self- 
interest dictated — Radisson wrote out his Memoirs 
in English, for the edification of the King. An 
unlearned but brave and witty Frenchman, Radis- 
son's narratives, in a language he was ill versed in, 
are unique specimens of " English as she is wrote ;" 
they are, however, valuable records of a series of 
most remarkable explorations in the American 
wilderness of the seventeenth century. Radisson 
was an acute observer and very much of a philoso- 
pher in his way. 

Some Hurons served these adventurous mer- 
chants as their guides to the upper country, and 
they staid for some time in the villages of the 
former — apparently on one of the Manitoulin 



DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 39 

islands. On the Great Manitoulin, they visited the 
Ottawas, and when winter came on pushed south- 
westward to the Pottawatomie country — the islands 
at the mouth of Green Bay, and the mainland to 
the southward along the western shore of Lake 
Michigan. They spent several months among 
these friendly Wisconsin people. 

In the spring, Radisson and Groseilliers followed 
the wake of Nicolet by going up Fox River, through 
the Winnebago country, to visit the Mascoutins. 
The latter told them of the Sioux, their neighbors 
to the west ; also of a wandering tribe, the Christi- 
nos or Crees, who lived on the shores of Hudson's 
Bay in the summer and along the south shore of 
Lake Superior in the winter. 

Radisson speaks with enthusiasm of their kindly 
treatment by the Mascoutins and says, " We ware 
4 moneths in our voyage without doeing any thing 
but goe from river to river." He alludes, in- 
cidently, to "ye great river" into which he and 
Groseilliers were conducted by their Indian friends, 
and describes a stream which answers to the Mis- 
sissippi. It is reasonable to conclude that in the 
course of these four months of water journeys 
as guests of the Mascoutins, wherein they were 
anxious " to be knowne with the remotest people " 
and to see all there was to be seen, the adventurers 
trimmed their bark to the current of the Missis- 



40 DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 

sjppi — antedating the discovery claimed for La 
Salle * by not less than eleven years, and that 
of Joliet and Marquette by fourteen years. 

Upon the conclusion of their visit to the Mas- 
coutins, the adventurers returned by the way of 
Green Bay and the Straits of Mackinaw, in 
company with a party of their hosts, to Sault Ste. 
Marie. After cruising along a portion of the 
southeastern shores of Lake Superior, in the neigh- 
borhood of the Sault, in the prosecution of their fur 
trade, they returned to Lower Canada by way of 
the accustomed route of the Ottawa River, arriving 
at Three Rivers about the first of June, 1660. 

Radisson again set out for the upper country, in 
company with Groseilliers, in August, 1661. With 
them were six other French fur-traders, and the 
aged Jesuit missionary, Rene Menard, together with 
several small bands of Hurons and Ottawas return- 
ing home from a trading trip to Three Rivers. 
The little f^eet of canoes closely skirted the rugged 
south shore of Lake Superior, and the whites 
were the first of their race to see the Pictured 
Rocks. At Keweenaw Bay, where they arrived 
the fifteenth of October, Menard and the other 
Frenchmen, together with a party of Ottawas, were 
left; while Radisson and Groseilliers pushed on to 
the west. Portaging across the great Keweenaw 

* Margr>', Vol. I. pp. 324, 378, 379. 



DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 41 

Point, they visited a. village of Christines, some 
miles northeast of Montreal River, where there 
was an abundance of buffalo, moose and beaver. 
While there they learned of the copper mines which 
were then being worked from time to time by the 
Indians ; the metal was pounded smooth with 
stones and fashioned with much skill into a great 
variety of curious implements which, with those of 
stone, were afterwards abandoned when the spread 
of the French fur-trade enabled the savages to secure 
European implements at a far less expenditure of 
labor. 

Near the Montreal River, some of the Huron 
companions of the adventurers left them, to proceed 
overland by a well-worn trail to their village about 
the sources of the Chippewa River. The French- 
men pushed on with the remainder of the Hurons 
and after a portage across what is now known as 
Oak Point, in Ashland County, entered Chequame- 
gon Bay — a noble sheet of water, fringed by 
the picturesque Apostle Islands, and to-day the 
most popular of the Lake Superior summer resorts. 

It was lonely and dreary enough, however, when 
Radisson and his companion scrambled ashore 
from their bark canoe, after a tedious voyage, and 
stretched their cramped legs upon the beach near 
where the city of Ashland nestles to-day. Winter 
was just setting in, the waters of the bay were 



42 DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 

taking on that black and sullen aspect peculiar 
to the season, the islands looked gloomy indeed, in 
their dark evergreen mantles, while before the 
venturesome traders a dense and dark forest 
stretched southward for hundreds of miles. Here 
and there in the primeval depths was a small 
cluster of starveling Algonkins, still trembling 
from fear of a return of the Iroquois who had 
chased them from Canada into these far-away 
swamps and matted woods, where their safety lay 
in hiding. At great intervals, uncertain trails led 
from village to village, and the rivers were in places 
convenient highways ; these narrow paths, however, 
beset with danger in a thousand shapes, but em- 
phasized the unspeakable terrors of the wilderness. 
The F'renchmen built near where they landed, 
what they called a "fort" — a small log hut oc- 
cupying the extremity of a spit of land ; the door 
opened towards the water front, while the land 
side, to the rear of the house, was defended by a 
salient of palisades stretching from bank to bank 
of the narrow promontory. All about the fort they 
laid boughs, one upon another ; and in addition to 
this stretched a long cord upon which were strung 
a number of the small hawk-bells commonly used in 
the fur-trade for purposes of gift and barter. It was 
expected that in case of a night attack the enemy 
would run afoul of the bells, the ringing of which 




IN THE WISCONSIN FOREST. 



DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 45 

would arouse the garrison. These ingenious de- 
fenses were not put to the test, although they 
doubtless had a good moral effect in keeping the 
thieving Hurons at a respectful distance from the 
white men's stores. 

At the end of a fortnight, the bulk of these 
stores were secretly cached and the traders pro- 
ceeded with their dusky companions to the prin- 
cipal Huron village at the head of the Chippewa 
River, passing the winter of 1661-62 in that 
vicinity. The season was phenomenally severe and 
the Hurons could not find enough game to properly 
sustain life. A famine ensued in the camp, the 
tragical details of which are painted by Radisson 
with a painful minuteness worthy of Hogarth. In 
the early spring, upon a search for provisions, they 
visited the Buffalo band of the Sioux, in the Mille 
Lac region of Minnesota, staying with them for 
some six weeks, and then the Frenchmen returned 
to Chequamegon Bay, where they built another 
fort, this time on Oak Point. After a time spent 
here, during which Radisson fell ill and when both 
the explorers encountered much hardship from the 
backwardness of the season, they ventured with their 
goods as far nortliwest as the Christino villages on 
Lake Assiniboine, and appear to have returned to 
Three Rivers in 1662. 

Father Menard, who had been left at Keweenaw 



46 DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 

Bay by Radisson and Groseilliers in October, 1661, 
was not successful in his attempts to convert the 
Ottawas there, and set out the following June 
for the Huron villages on the upper waters of the 
Black and Chippewa rivers. There has been some 
question as to how Menard reached Black River 
— whether across country by Indian trails, or by 
the way of the Menomonee River, Green Bay, the 
Fox-Wisconsin watercourse and the Mississippi. 
The weight of testimony is in favor of the latter 
route which was, as well, the easier of the two.* 

It is probable, therefore, that Menard and his ser- 
vant, Jean Guerin, a gunsmith by trade, were upon 
the waters of the Upper Mississippi two years after 
Radisson's voyage and eleven before that of Joliet. 
The journey had been a long and painful one, in 
the heat of midsummer; they suffered from hunger, 
bruised feet and myriads of mosquitoes, while the 
Indian Qruides were often insolent and cruel in 
their exactions. On the seventh of August, while 
portaging around some rapids in the Black River, 
Menard lost the blind trail and was never after 
seen by his party. He was either killed by lurking 
savages, or died from exposure. His kettle was 
afterwards seen by Guerin in the hands of a Sac 
Indian, while his breviary and cassock were said 



*See Tailhan's Perrot, p. 92; also l-'ranquelin's map (16S8), in Winsor's Narrative 
and Critical History 0/ A vterica. Vol. IV. p. 230. 



DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 47 

to have been found in the possession of the 
Sioux. 

Menard's death left the Ottawa mission on Lake 
Superior vacant, and in August, 1665, Claude 
Allouez, another Jesuit priest, was sent to reopen 
it. He chose his site on the southwestern shore of 
Chequamegon Bay, probably between the present 
cities of Ashland and Washburn. This region 
came to be called La Pointe, while the mission it- 
self was named in honor of the Holy Ghost.* To 
the summer tourists who now flock by hundreds to 
Chequamegon Bay, are shown some ruins at the 
La Pointe of to-day, on Madeline Island, opposite 
Bayfield, which they are assured are those of the 
ancient Jesuit mission house. But the original 
La Pointe mission was on the mainland, fifteen 
miles or so to the southwest. The island mission 
house, widely advertised as that of Allouez and 
Marquette, is scarcely sixty years old. 

At La Pointe, Father Allouez found in progress 
a council wherein a dozen petty bands were trying, 
after their blustering fashion, to agree upon a scalp- 
ing expedition against the Sioux ; but the good 
Father persuaded them to the contrary and thus 
secured for a time that tranquillity so essential to 
his aims. The news of his coming was soon spread 
far and wide and there flocked to his rude bark 

* La Pointe du Saint Esprit. 



48 DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 

chapel the representatives of many tribes, to stare 
in open-mouthed wonder at his glittering altar 
ornaments and silken vesture, as well as to barter 
for utensils, weapons and ornaments of European 
manufacture ; for Allouez's mission was likewise 
a trading post. The Ottawas and Chippewas, with 
their large fields of Indian corn and their stationary 
villages, were his immediate neighbors, the visi- 
tors from distant parts being the Pottawatomies 
and the Miamis, from the shores of Lake Michi- 
gan ; the Kickapoos from Western Wisconsin ; 
the Sacs and Foxes from the country about the 
Fox and Wolf Rivers; the Illinois, living still 
farther to the south, and the Sioux of the western 
plains, these latter bringing him news of the 
" Messipi," a great river which ran through their 
lands. But despite his large congregations, Allouez 
made little headway among them, being consoled 
for his hardships and ill-treatment by the devotion 
of a mere handful of insignificant followers. 

Allouez labored thus alone in the wilderness, 
hoping against hope, for four years, varying the 
monotony of his dreary task by occasional canoe 
trips to Quebec, to report progress to his superior. 
Father James Marquette, a more youthful zealot, 
was at last sent to relieve him, and in September, 
1669, arrived at La Pointe from Sault Ste. Marie, 
where he and Father Claudius Dablon, newly 



DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 49 

appointed as Jesuit Superior of the upper country, 
had been encjao^ed durino- the summer in establish- 
ing a successful mission. It took Marquette, sadly 
hampered by snow and ice, a full month to make 
the trip from the Sault to Chequamegon Bay. 

Father Allouez, upon being thus relieved from a 
work that had doubtless palled upon him, proceeded 
upon invitation of the Pottawatomies to Green Bay, 
where he arrived early in December. While the en- 
tire region thereabout was styled " Bay des Puants " 
— afterwards Green Bay — the St. Francis Xavier 
Mission now opened by Allouez was not on the 
bay shore, but upon the south side of the Fox River, 
some six miles above its mouth — the site of the 
present manufacturing city of Depere.* This was 
the second Jesuit establishment within what is now 
Wisconsin. At Depere are the first rapids en- 
countered in the ascension of Fox River ; it is 
therefore the head of natural navigation for the 
large vessels of our day, and was then the first 
canoe portage. The banks are high and command 
a fine view up and down the river and out 
into the bay beyond ; the soil is fertile and spring- 
water abundant. It was from early days a favorite 
rallying point for the natives ; and this fact, added to 
its natural advantages, made the site an admira- 
ble one for Allouez's enterprise. 

* Corrupted from Mission des percs, or " Mission of the Fathers," 



50 DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIEPI. 

It was a hybrid village that the Father had come 
to, at this Depere portage. There were here rep- 
resented the Winnebagoes, who were lords of the 
manor ; the Pottawatomies from the neighboring 
shore of Lake Michigan and the united Sacs and 
Foxes who practically controlled the highway 
to the Mississippi. There were few members 
of these intermarried tribes eager to be baptized, 
but they looked pleased when, during the winter, 
the good man went among the rude bark lodges 
and matted tepees of his shiftless parishioners and 
cared for the sick and spoke words of encourage- 
ment to the downhearted ; and when he visited 
neighboring villages on similar errands of mercy, 
he was, as a rule, kindly received. 

In April, Father Allouez established the mission 
of St. Mark among the Foxes on the forest-girt 
waters of Wolf River, the chief tributary of the Fox ; 
probably near Lake Shawano, later the chief seat of 
the Chippewa nation. In the course of the summer 
he went to the Sault to see his superior, Dablon, 
who returned with him to St. Francis Xavier in 
September. About this time serious trouble had 
arisen on Lake Superior. The Ottawas and 
Hurons at La Pointe, arrogant in the possession of 
fire-arms obtained from the French in trade, had at 
last provoked the western Sioux to war, and Mar- 
quette was powerless to prevent the outbreak of 



DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 5 1 

the latter, who rejected his peace proposals and 
imperiously sent back the presents which he had 
forwarded to these autocrats of the plains. The 
result was that the La Pointe Indians were driven 
eastward alon^ the southern shore of the lake, like 
leaves before an autumn blast, the Ottawas taking 
up their home in the Manitoulin Islands of Lake 
Huron, and the Hurons accompanying Marquette 
to the Straits of Mackinaw.* There he established 
on the mainland west of Mackinaw island a mission 
which he called St. Ignace. 

The Great Lake now being closed to the 
French, it became necessary to stimulate St. 
Francis Xavier mission, in the hope that the 
nations beyond might be reached by the Fox- 
Wisconsin river route, the entrance to which it 
was important to keep in the control of the Jesuits. 
Dablon and Allouez therefore made an expedi- 
tion up the Fox River. At the Kakalin rapids, 
they found on a high bank an Indian idol that had 
been set up by the Winnebagoes. Dablon de- 
scribes it as " a rock formed naturally in the shape 
of a man's bust," and says that, it being the deity 
of the waterfall, its face was daubed in fantastic 
colors by Indians who had successfully stemmed 
the torrent, and that "sacrifices of tobacco or 



*The Roman Catholic mission at La Pointe was not re-establisiied until one hundred 
and seventy years later. 



52 DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 

arrows or paintings " were made to it. This gaudy 
god of the heathens the priests toppled over into 
the river and went on their way rejoicing. Above 
Lake Winnebago, they visited the Foxes and the 
Mascoutins — the latter still occupying the vil- 
lage in which they were found by Nicolet and 
Radisson. Dablon records that in their journey they 
frequently met great droves of "wild cows," prob- 
ably deer, and often found buffalo grazing in the 
rich pastures along the Fox ; and noticed that 
because of this abundance of food the Indians of 
the region were " not obliged to separate by families 
during the hunting season, as the savages of other 
countries do." 

Later in the year, Dablon went down to Quebec 
to become superior of his order in Canada, send- 
ing to the Sault as his district successor, Henry 
Nouvel. In 1 67 1, Nouvel sent to Green Bay 
another priest, Louis Andre, to assist Allouez in 
ministerino: to the savas^es at St. Francis Xavier 
and St. Mark. Andre appears, however, to have 
become the chief ministrant at these two missions, 
leaving Allouez to rove among the Foxes, the 
Mascoutins, the Kickapoos, the Illinois, the Miamis 
and the Weas — the first regularly-installed itiner- 
ant preacher in Wisconsin. We are told that 
Andre was particularly successful with the chil- 
dren at Depere rapids, where he taught them to 



DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 



53 



sing psalms of Christian praise and spirited songs 
ridiculing superstition, whilst he accompanied 
them with more or less harmony upon the flute. 
The chiefs were stubborn idolators, however, and 
stoutly argued with him, sometimes getting very 
angry, as theological disputants are apt to. " The 




devil," exclaimed a chief, " is the great captain : 
he put Christ to death, and will kill you!" It 
was a hard field for the Christian devotee, but he 
appears to have had the blood of the martyrs in 
him, and neither faltered nor complained, even 
when during a temporary absence his hut was 



54 DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 

burned down by his enemies and his entire winter 
stock of food destroyed. 

Meanwhile Allouez had met with a certain degree 
of success upon his travels. At the Mascoutin vil- 
lage, he had reared a chapel of reeds which he styled 
the mission of St. James ; and there, on Assump- 
tion Day, 1672, this pioneer apostle planted a tall 
cross and fervidly preached before it to a large 
audience in which five distinct tribes were 
represented. 

The Jesuit priests were not the only whites in 
Wisconsin during these years of missionary ac- 
tivity. The coureurs de bois were not long in fol- 
lowing the paths pointed out by the traders Nicolet, 
Radisson and Groseilliers and the gunsmith Guerin. 
The trading companions of Menard, at Keweenaw 
Bay, had, as early as the spring of 1662, penetrated 
to Green Bay, probably by way of the Menomonee, 
and when Allouez set out from the Sault for Green 
Bay, seven years later, the Pottawatomies, he tells 
us, did not want him to come to their country for 
the purpose of instructing them in the faith, "but 
to soften some young Frenchmen who were among 
them for the purposes of trading, and who threat- 
ened and ill-treated them." 

A leader in this band of lawless traders, whose 
roving operations extended along Fox River and 
the western shore of Lake Michigan, was Nicholas 



DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 55 

Perrot. He was intelligent, had some education, 
was an accomplished woodsman, and from boy- 
hood had spent his life among the western savages. 
He was but twenty-six years of age when he left 
Green Bay for the lower country in charge of a 
fleet of canoes laden with Wisconsin furs and pro- 
pelled by Indians. 

Upon his arrival at Quebec, in July, he was en- 
gaged to pilot the Sieur Saint Lusson, deputy of 
Intendant Talon, to Sault Ste. Marie and act as 
his interpreter. The objects were, to regain the 
friendship of all the tribes living upon the shores 
of Lake Superior and thus cut off the rivalry of 
the English, who were now receiving large con- 
signments of fur from that quarter ; to search for 
copper mines in the Northwest ; and to " discover 
the Sea of the South," * the thrifty agent paying his 
way from the profits of the fur trade in which he 
was permitted to engage while upon the expedition. 
Saint Lusson and Perrot proceeded, in October, 
to the Manitoulin Islands, in Lake Huron. While 
Perrot went on alone to attend to his affairs at 
Green Bay, Saint Lusson spent the winter upon 
the islands hunting and trading. They met in 
May, 1 67 1, at the Sault. 

On the fourteenth of June, after the conclusion of 
a treaty of friendship with the naked representa- 

* Tlie Gulf of California. 



56 DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 

tives of a dozen forest tribes, Saint Lusson took 
formal possession of the Northwest, in the name 
of Louis XIV., King of France. His witnesses 
were, the Jesuits Dablon, Allouez, Andre and Dreuil- 
letes, Perrot as interpreter, Louis Joliet and a 
number of other coureurs de bois. Thus peacefully 
did Wisconsin, together with pretty much all of 
the neighboring country east of the Mississippi and 
north of the Ohio, come under the domination of 
France. 

Joliet returned to Quebec with Saint Lusspn's 
party and there met the recently appointed gov- 
ernor of New France, Count de Frontenac, a man 
imbued with energetic enterprise and an ambition 
to rival Champlain in extending the boundaries of 
the province. Frontenac selected Joliet as the 
proper person to regularly explore the Fox-Wis- 
consin waterway and the Mississippi, and to ascer- 
tain whether the great river really flowed into the 
South Sea as the Indians alleged. That Radis- 
son, Groseilliers, Menard and Guerin had already 
been upon the Upper Mississippi, may be set down 
as reasonably certain, and we know that the lower 
reaches of the river were visited by De Soto's ill- 
fated Spanish expedition as early as 1541. But 
the Spaniards had added but little to the general 
fund of knowledge regarding the mighty stream, 
and the chance voyages of Radisson and Guerin 



DISCOVERY OF l^ffE MISSISSIPPI. 57 

were scarcely more productive of information. The 
fact that Joliet's expedition resulted in the first 
definite knowledge of the river and its Wisconsin 
approach from Green Bay to the mouth of the 
Arkansas, and blazed a broad path for later ad- 
venturers, entitles his name to high credit as an 
original explorer. 

At the Straits of Mackinaw, Joliet met Father 
Marquette, with whom he was on friendly relations, 
for this coureur dc dots had in his youth been a 
bright scholar in the Jesuit school at Quebec. 
Marquette, himself a hardy woodsman and expert 
canoeist, had probably been invited by Frontenac 
to join Joliet, that both material and spiritual inter- 
ests might be duly represented. At all events, 
when Joliet started out from St. Ignace, May 17, 
1673, Marquette was in his company, though in no 
wise officially connected with the enterprise. Five 
voyageurs, or boatmen, paddled their two canoes, 
and it can well be imagined that as the expedition 
set forth that gay spring morning, and hugged the 
forested southern shore of Upper Michigan, the 
hearts of the adventurers swelled with enthusiasm, 
thinking of the strange lands and stranger people 
they were destined soon to behold. 

They made such excellent progress that they 
arrived at the now well-known Mascoutin village on 
the Upper Fox, the seventh of June. Here they 



58 DISCOVERY OF THE AI/SSJSSJJ'EI. 

obtained guides, for the Fox above this point is but 
a narrow creek winding through immense reed 
swamps ; in Joliet's time this watery labyrinth was 
frequently choked with vegetation, and without 
guides passage was well-nigh impossible. The 
swampy portage which separates these sluggish and 
insignificant waters from the broad, swift channel 
of the Wisconsin, is but a mile and a half in width. 
With high water in the Wisconsin, this plain has 
been frequently flooded within the memory of men 
now living, so that continuous canoe passage from 
the Great Lakes to the Mississippi was possible 
for weeks at a time. 

But such fortune did not await Joliet and Mar- 
quette, and they were obliged to make the portage. 
The Wisconsin River, upon which they were now 
embarked, presents a striking contrast to the Fox. 
Its valley is from three to five miles broad, flanked 
on either side, below the portage, by an undulating 
range of imposing bluffs, from one hundred and 
fifty to three hundred and fifty feet in height. 
They are heavily wooded as a rule, although there 
is now, as then, much variety — pleasant slopes and 
pocket fields, on the sweet herbage of which the 
travelers saw deer and buffalo peacefully grazing ; 
naked water-washed escarpments, rising sheer above 
the stream ; terraced hills, with eroded faces, as- 
cending in a regular succession of benches to the 



DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 59 

cliff-like summits ; steep uplands whose forest 
growths have been shattered by tornadoes, and ro- 
mantic ravines worn deep by spring torrents im- 
patient to reach the river level. 

Between these ranges stretches a wide expanse 
of bottoms, either bog or sand plain, through which 
the swift current twists and bounds, constantly cut- 
tino; out new channels and fillino^ old ones with the 
debris. As it thus sweeps along, wherever its 
fancy listeth, here to-day and there to-morrow, it 
forms innumerable islands which greatly add to 
the picturesqueness of the view. These islands are 
often mere sand-bars, sometimes as barren as Sa- 
hara, again thick-grown with willows and seedling 
aspens ; but for the most part they are heavily 
wooded, their banks gay with the season's flowers 
and luxurious vines hanging in deep festoons from 
the trees which overhang the flood. It is no won- 
der that the gentle Marquette found this bewitch- 
ing valley a land most fair to see, and writes in his 
journal with enthusiasm, of " the vine-clad islets." 

On the seventeenth of June, the canoeists swiftly 
glided on the bubbled torrent, through the flood- 
washed delta of the Wisconsin, into the broad, 
sweeping current of the Mississippi, at this point 
nearly a mile in width. They gazed with rapt- 
ure upon one of the noblest scenes in America, 
and Marquette tells of the devout sentiments which 



6o DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 

possessed their hearts when they had at last found 
the object of their search, after thousands of miles 
of arduous journeying through a savage-haunted 
wilderness. 

The story of their journey southward, as far as 
the mouth of the Arkansas, is well-known. On his 
return, Joliet lost his box of papers at the foot of 
the La Chine rapids, within sight of the Montreal 
settlement. It was left to Marquette to publish to 
the world a report of this remarkable expedition, 
and to reap, for the glory of his order, the lion's 
share of fame.* 



* The Jesuit Father, though merely a subordinate in the expedition, has been accorded 
by most writers far greater credit than its leader. It is his statue, rather than Joliet's, 
which the Wisconsin legislature has recently voted to place in the Capitol at Washington ; 
and while Marquette has a county and a town in Wisconsin named in his honor, Joliet has 
not even been remembered in the list of cross-roads post-offices. Illinois has been more con- 
siderate of historical truth. 



CHAPTER III. 



EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS OF NEW FRANCE. 




OLIET and Marquette 
had returned to 
Green Bay, from 
their canoe trip to 
the mouth of the Ar- 
kansas, by the way of 
the UHnois River and 
the Chicago portage. 
Thence they leis- 
urely made their prog- 
ress down the west coast of Lake Michigan and 
were at St. Francis Xavier mission in September. 
While Joliet hurried on to Montreal to report his 
memorable discoveries, his Jesuit companion was 
forced from severe illness to tarry at the Bay and 
later in the year to forward his written account of 
the expedition through the apparently uncertain 
agency of a party of Ottawas en route for Three 
Rivers. But we have seen that Joliet's ofificial re- 
port never reached its destination, while the Indians 
succeeded in delivering Marquette's simple narra- 
tive to his Jesuit superior. 

6i 



62 EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS. 

While the worldly Joliet was vainly seeking 
authority from the home government in France, to 
proceed with twenty persons to the Illinois country 
and there establish a trading post, Marquette was 
bent on saving souls. His malady grievously op- 
pressed him until the summer of 1674. In October 
of that year he received orders from his superior to 
undertake the task he had so earnestly sought, of 
establishing a mission at Kaskaskia, among the 
Illinois Indians. With two white assistants and a 
number of Pottawatomies and Illinois, the Father 
proceeded northward down the eastern shore of 
Green Bay until he reached the deep indentation 
now know as Sturgeon Bay, 

So deep is this incision into the great neck of 
land separating the waters of Green Bay and Lake 
Michigan, that the canoeists penetrating to the 
head of Sturgeon Bay found but a mile and a half 
of heavily-forested sand-plain stretching southeast- 
ward between them and the waters of the lake. 
What was then a peculiarly favorable portage, sav- 
ing one hundred and fifty miles of stormy passage 
through the dreaded " Death's Door," between 
Green Bay and Chicago, is now the site of the 
Sturgeon Bay ship canal, one of the most useful of 
Government improvements on the upper lakes. 

Traversing this lonely cut-off through the dark 
pine woods, Marquette again set his canoes afloat 



EXPLORERS AND EUR-TRADERS. b^ 

upon the green waters of Lake Michigan and made 
such haste as November windstorms would allow, 
along the dreary shores of Eastern Wisconsin. Arriv- 
ing at the mouth of the Chicago River on the fourth 
of December, the missionary and his two white fol- 
lowers painfully passed the winter upon a wind- 
swept sand dune. In the spring they pushed on to 
the Illinois River, but the shadow of death was 
upon the devoted zealot and he hastened back, 
along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, resolved 
to die at Mackinaw among his religious brethren. 
The good man passed away May i8, 1675, while 
still upon his journey, a victim to exposure and 
improper nourishment; quite as much a martyr to 
the faith that was in him as any of his order who 
were roasted by the Iroquois. 

Joliet was denied the privilege of reaping mate- 
rial advantage from the discovery which he had 
made for Frontenac. That astute official was inter- 
ested in the far-reaching fur-trade adventures of 
Robert Cavelier, known to history as La Salle, one 
of the most remarkable characters developed dur- 
ing the career of New France. 

La Salle's appeals to the court for permission to 
explore the Mississippi region at his own cost, and 
recompense himself by trade with the Indians, were 
backed by Frontenac and at last granted in May, 
1678. La Salle had, previous to this, had some 



64 EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS. - 

trade with the upper country by means of coureurs 
de bois sent out under his auspices. And it has 
been claimed for him that in 1671 he went in person 
to Green Bay and coasted the west shore of Lake 
Michigan as far south as the Chicago River ; that 
he portaged to the IlHnois River and descended the 
Mississippi to the thirty-sixth degree of latitude two 
years before Joliet's voyage. But this claim lacks 
the support of proof. 

It is certain, however, that in 1673 Sieur Raudin, 
the engineer who planned La Salle's fort at Fron- 
tenac, now Kingston, on Lake Ontario, went to the 
western extremity of Lake Superior with presents 
from La Salle to the Chippewas and Sioux. And 
in the summer of 1679, Daniel Grayson du Lhut,* 
by Count Frontenac's permission, was trading 
among these same Sioux in the Mille Lac region of 
Minnesota. Du Lhut was a hardy soldier of fortune 
and had fought in some desperate European cam- 
paigns. He proved himself a daring explorer and 
peculiarly successful in his treatment of the 
Indians. Ascending St. Louis River, now on the 
dividing line between Wisconsin and Minnesota, it 
is thought that he made the easy portage to Sandy 
Lake of the Upper Mississippi and thus was, 
after Radisson, the first white trader upon the 
head-waters of that great stream so soon to be 

* For whom the city of Diihith, Minn., was named. 



EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS. 65 

the scene of active operations on the part of his 
contemporaries. 

That same summer of 1679, La Salle's small 
vessel, the Griffin — the first sailing craft on the 
Great Lakes above the cataract of Niagara — put 
in its appearance among the islands at the mouth 
of Green Bay, much to the amazement of the 
simple Pottawatomies who were there domiciled. 
Here La Salle found a party of his traders who, 
having been sent in advance by canoe the previous 
autumn, had accumulated a considerable stock of 
furs from the Wisconsin tribes. The Griffin, being 
loaded with these peltries and ordered to Niagara, 
was never again seen by its owner. Some Indians 
afterwards reported that the vessel was wrecked ; 
but La Salle heard another story, and perhaps the 
most likely, to the effect that the pilot, who was 
known to be an insubordinate rascal, was with four 
of his companions afterwards trading on the Upper 
Mississippi with goods stolen from the ship. 

La Salle does not appear to have visited the St. 
Francis Xavier mission, still in progress at Depere, 
notwithstanding his proximity to that spiritual 
abode. And, indeed, this lack of courtesy was 
natural on his part, for the Jesuit order was not 
friendly to his cause and the missionary would very 
likely have reported him at Quebec; for in pene- 
trating the waters of Lake Michigan, he had ex- 



66 EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS. 

ceeded his licensed bounds and was holding an 
illicit traffic. 

Upon parting with his ship, with instructions to 
the master to meet him at the head of Lake 
Michigan on the return trip, La Salle and four- 
teen of his men had proceeded southward in four 
deeply-laden canoes along the Wisconsin shore. 
The island in Green Bay, on which the party had 
rendezvoused, was a considerable distance from the 
mainland, and the navigators were about midway 
when what was a glassy fiood in the afternoon 
became transformed into a raging sea. They were 
in great jeopardy, but kept their spirits up and the 
fleet united by shouting to each other through the 
inky night until at last they reached a compara- 
tively quiet cove and pitched camp under the dreary 
pines. They were storm-bound here for five days, 
being fed by the neighboring Pottawatomies with 
Indian corn and pumpkins. 

At last they reembarked, but the tempest broke 
forth again and this time they took refuge upon a 
barren little isle, spending there two days of misery, 
washed by the spray and buffeted by the gale. 
And thus, again and again, did treacherous Sep- 
tember storms interrupt their progress. They were 
spent with hunger, fatigue and exposure, and a 
mutinous spirit arose among the men ; for La Salle 
now declined to allow his party to stop at the Indian 



EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS. 6-] 

villages occasionally seen along the coast, being 
fearful of the opportunity thus afforded his follow- 
ers to steal the merchandise and desert to the 
savages. 

On the first of October, the adventurers were 
nearly lost while attempting to land their frail 
barks upon a sandy beach over which the surf 
rolled with frightful fury. Many were capsized and 
with difficulty brought to land ; but despite the 
general fatigue, the fear of famine induced La Salle 
to order a raid upon an Indian village, from which 
the Pottawatomie inhabitants had fled at the ap- 
proach of the whites ; and here a considerable 
quantity of corn was confiscated, goods being left 
behind by way of compensation. 

The voyagers were in a desperate strait when at 
length they entered a bay which was apparently that 
of Milwaukee River. The almost ceaseless storms 
had greatly protracted the journey and made canoe- 
ing through the great swells a labor both weari- 
some and hazardous ; the landinsfs each nio-ht, 
through the breakers, grew more and more diffi- 
cult and the banks higher and more cliff-like, the 
farther south they proceeded ; their provisions had 
at last become restricted to a handful of corn each 
day, per man, and dejection, sickness and exposure 
had worn them to a pitiful condition. 

On the forested shores of this beautiful bay, they 



6S EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS. 

were startled to find the print of a human foot, 
where they had anticipated a period of rest in an 
uninhabited wild. It rained heavily all that night, 
but the white camp was alert ; and well it was, for 
a party of Fox Indians approached the bivouac 
under cover of the bluff and startled the sentries 
before dawn, although the unwelcome visitors 
withdrew upon discovery, mumbling" the excuse 
that they had imagined the new arrivals to be 
Iroquois. The red men stole articles from under 
the upturned canoes during the night. La Salle 
went out the next day and single-handed captured 
a young Fox, as a hostage for their return. A 
battle was imminent. Sixscore Indians surrounded 
the little camp with loud cries of vengeance, but 
the Frenchmen finally won them over to reason 
and were abundantly recompensed for the thefts ; 
while, in accordance with Indian custom, per- 
petual amity was henceforth promised. 

After spending a brief season with his new- 
found friends. La Salle proceeded along-shore to 
the mouth of St. Joseph's River, where he built a 
fort and on the third of December started upon 
that notable expedition which resulted in the first 
civilized occupation of the Illinois country — at 
Fort Crevecoeur. On the twenty-ninth of Feb- 
ruary, 1680, La Salle sent Father Louis Hennepin, 
one of three Franciscan friars who had accompanied 



EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS. 69 

him upon his tour from Green Bay, together with 
two coureurs de bois, Michel Accau and Antoine 
Auguel, upon an exploring expedition up the Mis- 
sissippi River. Accau was the leader of the party, 
but Hennepin being its historian generally gets 
the credit for its explorations. They proceeded in 
their canoe down the Illinois River to its mouth, 
and thence breasted the current of the Father of 
Waters — some six and a half years later than 
Joliet. They took especial notice of the Wisconsin 
and Black rivers. Meeting a party of Sioux going- 
south upon a scalping expedition, Accau induced 
them to turn back on their path and take them to 
their village, where a considerable trade was trans- 
acted, for the French canoe was well laden with 
European articles used in forest barter. About 
three miles below the present city of St. Paul, the 
canoes were hidden in the reeds and an overland 
journey undertaken to the Mille Lacs Sioux. 
From here the adventurers went upon a buffalo 
hunt with a party of their entertainers, below St. 
Croix River, on the Wisconsin side. 

And now to return to that daring and successful 
chief of coureurs de bois, Du Lhut. We have seen 
that during the summer of 1679, he was trading 
with the Sioux on the headwaters of the Mississippi 
and the Mille Lacs country. The succeeding 
winter, he spent in profitable commerce with the 



yo EXFLOKEKS AND EUR-TRADEKS. 

Assineboines, Crees and other northern tribes in 
the neighborhood of Grand Portage, on the present 
dividine line between Minnesota and Canada. In 
June, 1 680, he set out with a small party of em- 
ployes to reach the Mississippi River, probably not 
being aware that he could have easily reached it 
from the Mille Lacs by way of the Rum River. 
Coursins the extreme southwestern shore of Lake 
Superior, he entered the narrow and turbulent Bois 
Brule, in our day perhaps the most famous of 
Wisconsin trout streams, and with diflficulty made 
his way over the fallen trees and beaver dams which 
then choked its course. From its headwaters, 
there is a short portage to the Upper St. Croix ; 
and this traversed, Du Lhut was upon a romantic 
stream which swiftly carried him through dashing 
rapids and deep, cool lakes, into the mighty 
Mississippi. 

Here he was surprised by the information that 
Europeans were hunting with the Sioux near the 
mouth of the Chippewa River, on the Wisconsin 
shore. Pressing forward, he soon met the traders 
and the priest, the latter being an old acquaintance. 
The Indians had, towards the last, sadly maltreated 
Hennepin and his companions, robbing them of 
their valuables and practically making them prison- 
ers. The arrival of the fur trader was therefore 
timely. He roundly abused the savages for their 



EXPLORERS AND EUR-TRADERS. 7 1 

ill-treatment of his friends and at the same time 
sharply reproved the friar for suffering such insults 
without resentment. Du Lhut and the others now 
returned with the Sioux to Mille Lacs, where they 
were handsomely treated, and in the autumn returned 
home — descending Rum River, which is the outlet 
of Mille Lacs ; portaging around the Falls of St. 
Anthony, then and there named by the devout 
Hennepin ; drifting down to the mouth of the 
Wisconsin ; ascending the Wisconsin and descend- 
ing the Fox amid many curious adventures, and 
spending the winter at Mackinaw. Du Lhut made 
the trip over the Fox-Wisconsin route several times 
in later years. 

An adventurous voyageur named La Sueur was 
the next man to imprint his name on the page of 
Wisconsin history. In 1683, he made a tour with 
a few companions over the now familiar Fox- 
Wisconsin River route, from Lake Michio;an to the 
Mississippi, and ascended to the Falls of St. 
Anthony and beyond, where he traded with the 
Sioux. 

We have already mentioned the early adventures 
of Nicholas Perrot in Wisconsin, and the part he 
took in St. Lusson's expedition to Sault Ste. Marie 
in 1670-71. In 1685, De la Barre, who had succeeded 
Frontenac as governor of New France, appointed 
the redoubtable Perrot " commandant of the West" 



72 EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS. 

and gave him an army of twenty men to hold that 
vast territory in subjection. He proceeded to 
Green Bay in as much state as was practicable 
with such a contingent, and found at St. Francis 
Xavier mission P^ather John Enjalran — the only 
priest then west of Lake Michigan ; for the Wis- 
consin Indians had proven so obdurate, despite 
apparent successes in the early years, as to wholly 
discourage the Jesuits. Enjalran himself was 
withdrawn three years later, no attempt being made 
to resuscitate the cause at Green Bay, until a 
quarter of a century afterwards. 

At Green Bay, Perrot met some Indians from 
the West, who were visiting there, and they told 
him of many strange things — of the brilliantly- 
colored sandstones of the Minnesota country; of 
white men ridins: on horses, in the far south — 
doubtless the Spaniards of New Mexico ; and of 
other whiles in the far north, who lived in houses 
that " walked on the water " — the English, who 
were now well-established in a profitable fur-trade 
on Hudson's Bay, having been led thither in 1667 
by our old friends Radisson and Groseilliers, then 
in the service of the British. 

Perrot was familiar enough with the Wisconsin 
country, but these tales were fraught with fresh 
information to him, and imbued him with an in- 
t'Mise desire to at once seize upon the treasures of 



G^ 
P't 



S" 




G) 




he Grifhii 



EXPLORERS AND EUR-TRADERS. 75 

the West and establish the claims of the French 
before these mysterious whites to the north and 
south, whoever they were, had penetrated the 
interior and blocked the progress of New France. 

At the portage between the Fox and Wisconsin, 
Perrot's party had some dif^culty with thirteen Hu- 
rons, who were opposed to his project of establish- 
ing a trade with their enemies, the Sioux, but there 
does not appear to have been anything worse than a 
wordy quarrel. Perrot's Memoir makes no men- 
tion of a post established either on the banks or 
near the mouth of the Wisconsin River by La 
Salle, some two years before ; * perhaps it was no 
longer in existence. Buffalo were then numerous 
along this noble stream, and the earliest French 
traders found here a considerable source of supply, 
in the coveted pelts of these animals. 

Upon reaching the Mississippi, Perrot sent out 
some Winnebago runners to notify the Sioux that 
he proposed to build a trading post some distance 
up the river, and that occasional prairie fires would 
be set along the banks to serve as a guide for the 
Indian hunting parties, in following him. The 
savages of the Upper Mississippi region had by 
this time become largely dependent upon the white 
traders for weapons, ammunition, domestic utensils 
and ornaments, and were ever anxious to welcome 

• Margry, Vol. II. p. 254. 



76 EXPLORERS AND EUR-TRADERS. 

the advent of a French trading party ; although the 
latter were obliged to fortify themselves, from fear 
that the cupidity of their wily customers, or some 
strange freak of suspicion on their part, might 
induce treachery. 

During the winter of 1685-86, Perrots head- 
quarters were a rude stockade built at the foot of a 
commanding bluff on the east bank of the Missis- 
sippi, about a mile above the modern village of 
Trempealeau ; and from here he sent out his 
coureurs de bois to trade with the Sioux of the Min- 
nesota plains, just beyond the great river. What 
are thought to be the ruins of these winter quar- 
ters of Perrot were unearthed in the fall of 1887 
and the spring and summer of 1888, under the 
direction of a party of Wisconsin and Minne- 
sota antiquarians. 

Moving up stream, in the spring of 1686, Perrot 
entered Lake Pepin, now far-famed for the rugged 
beauty of its shores, and upon the eastern, or Wis- 
consin bank, above the present village of Pepin, 
erected a second and more substantial stockade, 
which he called Fort St. Antoine. Perrot appears 
to have been commandant of the West until about 
1699, and during that period made frequent trips 
between the Upper Mississippi and the Lower St. 
Lawrence. He built several forts along the Mis- 
sissippi, for tne protection of his fur trade and the 



EXPLORERS AND EUR-TRADERS. J J 

lead-mining industry which he inaugurated in the 
Galena country ; one of these posts was Fort St. 
Nicholas, near the mouth of the Wisconsin — 
probably on the site of the Prairie du Chien of our 
day. It was at Fort St. Antoine, on the eighth of 
May, 1689, that Perrot took formal possession, in 
the name of his royal master, of the region drained 
by the rivers St. Croix, St. Peter and the Upper 
Mississippi and the basin of the Mille Lacs. These 
stockade posts erected by the early traders were as 
a rule placed at vantage points, such as a strait, a 
portage, at the mouth of a river or on the shores of 
an important lake, and at such places there were 
quite apt to be Indian villages. 

In 1802, there was plowed up at Depere, on the 
site of the ancient mission-house, a silver soleil or 
ostensorium, made to contain the consecrated wafer ; 
upon the rim was found an engraved inscription, in 
French: "This soleil was given by Mr. Nicholas 
Perrot, to the mission of St. Francis Xavier, at La 
Baye des Puants, * 1686." The soleil is still 
in existence and was exhibited at the Marietta 
Centennial, in 1888, as probably the oldest exist- 
ing relic of the European conquest west of the 
Alleghany Mountains. 



♦ Baye des Puaiits is literally, Bay of the Stinkards, sometimes rendered Bay of the Fetid. 
It refers to an old tradition that tlie Winnebagoes on Green Bay came from where the water 
wa? stinking or fetid — in fact, salt. This tradition was one of the causes which led Nicolet 
til imagine the Winnebagoes to have come from the China Sea. 



'jS EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS. 

In 1 703 there was published in France a remark- 
able work in two volumes, professing to be the ad- 
ventures in America of Baron la Hontan, a well- 
educated Gascon who had come to Canada in 1683 
and by ability had risen from the post of a common 
soldier to be a favorite of Frontenac, and in after 
years deputy governor of Placentia. In this journal 
La Hontan claims to have arrived at Green Bay 
in the fall of 1689, a few months after Perrot's act 
of taking possession, and to have traveled over the 
Fox-Wisconsin waterway to the Mississippi,, into 
which stream he entered the twenty-third of Octo- 
ber. He eave a marvelous account of his discov- 
eries in the Upper Mississippi basin, and traced 
rivers which were long accepted by geographers. 
But modem scholarship has discarded Hontan's 
narrative as largely, if not wholly, fabulous. 

Pierre le Sueur, the coui^cuer cic bois whose trip 
over the Fox-Wisconsin route in 1683 has already 
been alluded to, continued for many years to be a 
notable character in the Story of Wisconsin. 
Among the witnesses to Perrot's act, of 1689, was 
this same Le Sueur, then a considerable trader 
among the Indians of the Upper Mississippi coun- 
try. A Canadian by birth, and related to men of 
prominence in the councils of New France, he was 
among the favored few who were granted trading 
licenses in the Northwest. 



EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS. 79 

Toward the close of the seventeenth century, the 
Foxes, who then controlled the valleys of the Fox 
and Wisconsin rivers, had become so hostile to the 
French, partly through cupidity and partly through 
injuries wrought by the latter, the sense of which 
was heightened by overtures from the Dutch-En- 
glish traders at Albany, that these divergent streams 
were no longer safe as a gateway from the Great 
Lakes to the Great River. The tendency of the 
prolonged Fox war was to force fur trade travel to 
the portages of Chicago and St. Joseph's on the 
south, and those of Lake Superior on the north. 

It was with a view to keeping open one of the north- 
ern routes, the approach to the Mississippi by the 
way of the Bois Brule and St. Croix rivers, that Le 
Sueur was' dispatched by the authorities of New 
France, in 1693. ^^ built a stockaded fort at 
La Pointe, the old mission site on Chequamegon 
Bay, convenient for guarding the northern approach 
to this route ; and another on an island in the Mis- 
sissippi, below the mouth of the St. Croix and near 
the present town of Red Wing, Minnesota. This 
latter post soon became " the center of commerce 
for the Western parts." 

Four years later we find Le Sueur in France, a 
successful suitor for a license to operate certain 
"mines of lead, copper, blue and green earth," 
which he claimed to have discovered " at the source 



8o EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS. 

of the Mississippi." After many delays he set out 
from France late in 1699, in Iberville's second ex- 
pedition, having in his charge thirty experienced 
miners. His reporter and companion, Penicaut, 
says that in their voyage up the river in the summer 
of 1700, they found lead mines on the sites of the 
modern cities of Dubuque and Galena, which 
Perrot had discovered before them ; and supplied 
themselves with lead from what came to be after- 
wards known as " Snake diggings," near the pres- 
ent village of Potosi, Wisconsin. Le Sueur made 
note of the Wisconsin, Black, Buffalo, Chippewa 
and St. Croix, all of them Wisconsin rivers, and 
spent the winter in a stockade which he built on 
Blue River, in Minnesota. He traded to a consid- 
erable extent for beaver skins, but owing to the 
hostility of the marauding Foxes, his mining 
operations were confined to sending four thousand 
pounds of comparatively valueless blue and green 
earth to be assayed in Paris. 

On the eighteenth of October, 1699, Father St. 
Cosme, a native of Quebec, arrived at Green Bay 
on his way to the Lower Mississippi, whither he 
had been ordered by his missionary chief. He 
found upon his arrival there that his proposed 
route by way of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers was 
impracticable, owing to the opposition of the Fox 
Indians, " who will not suffer any person to pass, for 



EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS. 8i 

fear they will go to places at war with them," and 
supply their enemies the Sioux with fire-arms. He 
was therefore compelled to direct his boatmen to 
proceed southward, closely skirting the Wisconsin 
shore of Lake Michigan — La Salle's old route. 
On their way they stopped at a small Pottawatomie 
village, possibly the site of Sheboygan, " where Rev. 
Father Marest had wintered with some Frenchmen 
and planted a cross." The seventh of October 
found them at Milwaukee Bay, where they made a 
brief stay and found a considerable population of 
Mascoutins, Foxes and Pottawatomies, some of 
the same people who had annoyed La Salle's unfor- 
tunate party several years previous. 

We have seen that the Foxes, aided at times by 
the Mascoutins, had for some time been actinor 
badly toward the French, one of their complaints 
being that the latter were carrying arms to the 
Sioux ; and true enough, for the roving fur-traders 
had developed an extensive custom among the 
savages of the trans-Mississippi country, having 
already pushed as far west as the Upper Missouri; 
while but few streams of importance in Wisconsin 
or Minnesota had not been floating the canoes and 
batteaux of coureiirs de bois for many years. Im- 
mense sums of money were invested in these en- 
terprises, the coureurs being generally but the agents 
— the commercial travelers, in fact — of rich 



82 EXPLORERS AND EUR-TRADERS. 

companies of merchants quartered on the Lower 
St, Lawrence, or having their offices in France. 
The risks from forest fires, accidents en route, 
the cupidity of murderous savages and the treach- 
ery of \\\^ coureurs themselves, were enormous ; but 
the percentage of profits, when realized, was often 
reckoned by the hundreds, so that while many 
failed the few prospered sufficiently to make the 
risks attractive, and the woodsman who could pro- 
cure a government license to trade seldom failed to 
obtain sufficient financial backing for his venture. 

The Fox-Wisconsin route from Canada to the 
Mississippi, while farthest from Montreal, was the 
first of the six* great portage highways between 
the Great Lakes and the Great River, to be used by 
the French ; and, from the opposition of the Iro- 
quois, it continued to be long preferred by many to 
the more convenient southern portages. When the 
Fox outbreak, therefore, shut the Wisconsin gate 
in the face of the French, and forced them to use 
the Chicago and Lake Superior routes, much hard- 
ship was occasioned to the most important busi- 
ness interest in New France, 

* The principal routes between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi were : 

1. By the Miami River from the west end of Lake Erie to the Wabash; thence to the 
Ohio and the Mississippi. 

2. By the St. Joseph's River to the Wabash ; thence to the Ohio. 

3. By the St. Joseph's River to the Kankakee, and thence to the IlHnois and the 
Mississippi. 

4. By the Chicago River to the Illinois. 

5. By Green Bay, Fox River, and the Wisconsin River. 

6. By the Bois Brule River to the St. Croix River. 



EXPLORERS AXD FUR-IRADERS. 83 



The Foxes in the principal villages on the Fox and 
Wolf rivers had been profitably employed, as were 
the Menomonees before them, in helping the boats 
of traders and explorers over the numerous rapids 
and in " toting " cargoes over the portage trails. 
Their first offense consisted in collecting a tariff on 
goods entering their country, in addition to their 
fees as common carriers. The French, unlike some 
modern political economists, deemed a tariff to be 
a tax, and it being an unauthorized tax resisted it 
even to bloodshed. And thus, with complaints 
upon both sides, the trouble grew into formidable 
dimensions. 

It is related, that in the winter of 1706-07 a 
bold French captain, Marin by name, was sent out 
by the Quebec government to chastise the rascally 
Foxes. At the head of a large party of soldiers, 
coureurs dc bois and half-breeds, he ascended the 
frozen surface of the Lower Fox on snow-shoes, 
surprised the enemy who had assembled near the 
great village of their allies, the Sacs, at Winnebago 
Rapids, where is now the city of Neenah, and 
slew them by the hundreds. 

Afterwards, this same Marin — a famous par- 
tisan leader, by the way, who died in 1753, while 
commander of Duquesne's expedition to occupy 
the Ohio country — conducted a summer foray 
against the persistent Foxes. His boats were 



84 EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS. 

filled with armed men, but when they approached 
the Indian village the soldiers were covered down 
''with oilcloth, as traders were wont to treat their 
goods en voyage, to escape a wetting. Only two 
voyageurs were now visible in each boat, paddling 
and steering. Nearly fifteen hundred dusky tax- 
gatherers were discovered squatting on the strand at 
the foot of Winnebago Rapids, awaiting the arrival 
of the flotilla, apparently an easy prey. The canoes 
were ranged along the shore. Upon a signal be- 
ing given, the coverings were thrown off and volley 
after volley of hot lead poured into the mob of un- 
suspecting savages, a swivel-gun in Marin's boat 
aidins: in the slauo^hter. Tradition has it that over 
a thousand Foxes fell in that brutal assault. 

Still they were not vanquished. In 171 2, in 
company with the Mascoutins, they advanced to 
the attack of Detroit ; their attempts were futile, 
however, and they retired discomfited. But upon 
their own soil their depredations on the fur-trade 
became more extended than ever ; and so wide an 
area did they range over, that French interests in 
what is now Wisconsin and Minnesota were almost 
wholly annihilated. In 1716, De Louvigny, another 
captain of New France, is reported to have stormed 
the audacious Foxes. Far from being extermi- 
nated by previous forays, five hundred warriors 
nnd three thousand squaws and other non-combat- 



EXPLORERS AND FUR-TKADERS. 85 

ants are alleged to have been collected within a 
palisaded fort somewhere in the neighborhood of 
Winnebago Rapids. De Louvigny is credited with 
having captured the fort after a three days' siege, 
but the bluff old ranger was so pleased with the 
pluck and endurance of his enemy that he granted 
him the honors of war. 

Twelve years later the Foxes had again become 
so troublesome as to need renewed chastisement. 
This time the agent chosen was De Lignery, 
among whose lieutenants was Charles de Langlade, 
a fierce partisan whom we shall meet hereafter in the 
capacity of first permanent white settler in Wiscon- 
sin.* But the redskins had become wise, after their 
fashion, and fled before the Frenchmen, who found 
the villages on both the Lower and the Upper Fox 
deserted. The invaders burned every wigwam and 
cornfield in sight, from Green Bay to the portage. 
This expedition was followed by others — notably 
one under De Villiers in 1730, and another com- 
manded by De Noyelle in 1735 — until the Foxes, 
with their Sac allies, fled the valley never to return. 

Some time between 1718 and 1721, a French 
military station was established at Greeen Bay 
and styled Fort St. Francis, in honor of the former 
mission ; and in July of the latter year, Father 



* Another of De Lignery's lieutenants was Beaujeu, who was killed while leading the 
French troops at Braddock's defeat, in 1775. 



86 EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS. 

Charlevoix, traveler and historian, made a trip 
hither from Mackinaw, in company with M. de 
Montigny who was to take command of the new 
post. Five years later, we find Fort St. Francis 
under command of Sieur Amoritan ; and the follow- 
ing year (i 727), the Sieur de la Pierriere stopped 
here and made a successful run over the Fox- 
Wisconsin river route to the Upper Mississippi, 
where on the shores of Lake Pepin he planted 
another fort for the protection of fur-traders operat- 
ing in the Sioux country. This new post, called 
Fort Beauharnois, was planted at Pointe au Sable, 
on the Minnesota shore,* some eight or ten miles 
above the old site of Perrot's Fort St. Antoine, and 
was placed in command of Rene de Boucher, 
notorious for his bloody sack of Haverhill, Mas- 
sachusetts. In 1728, a river flood destroyed it, 
and it was afterwards rebuilt on a higher level. 
In 1766, however, Jonathan Carver found here but 
a crumbling ruin. 

The very same year that high water washed out 
Fort Beauharnois, De Lignery razed the fort at 
Green Bay, from fear of its falling an easy prey to 
the Foxes, when they should return over their 
smoking fields to wreak vengeance upon the de- 
stroying race. But two years afterward, another 
military stockade was built, this time on the west 

* Two miles east of the present railway station of Frontenac. 



EXPLORERS AND FUR-IRADERS. .Sj 

side of the Fox River, on the site of the later Fort 
Howard ; and until the fall of New France this 
proved the rallying point and defense of a floating 
French Creole and half-breed population, engaged 
in a wide-spread but spasmodic trade with the 
Wisconsin aborigines. 

This new station, given the general title of La 
Baye, was an important recruiting post for the 
French army during its long struggle with the 
British forces for supremacy on the Ohio and St. 
Lawrence. It was here that Langlade, Marin, 
Gautier and other partisan captains assembled 
their scalping parties of naked Menomonees, Foxes, 
Sacs, Winnebagoes, Pottawatomies, Ottawas, Chip- 
pewas and Sioux, to assist in those bloody forays 
upon the western borders of Pennsylvania which 
sent a thrill of horror throuQ-h the Ens^lish colonies. 
It was Langlade, with his feathered and painted 
demi-demons from Wisconsin, who led the fright- 
ful onslaught, that fateful ninth of July, 1755, 
when Braddock's army was sacrificed to the te- 
merity of its commander ; Langlade's Ottawas were 
prominent in the successful siege of Fort George, 
two years later ; while Wisconsin Indians under 
his command did effectual service before Quebec 
and frequently harried the army of Wolfe on the 
Plains of Abraham. 

But the power of the French on the North 



88 EXPLORERS AND EUR-TRADERS. 

American continent, came at last to an end. The 
red Indians of the West deserted their old-time 
allies, when the latter were most in need of them ; 
and when, on the eighth of September, 1760, the 
banner of the fieur-de-lis was lowered in New 
France and the union jack floated to the breeze, 
Wisconsin savages were among the first to ap- 
plaud the change. 



CHAPTER IV. 



UNDER THE BRITISH FLAG. 




T was with no small 
degree of exultation 
that the British fur- 
traders at Albany and 
on the Atlantic sea- 
board, greeted the 
announcement that 
the Northwest was 
at last opened to 
the m. Their in- 
trigues with Wisconsin Indians had materially 
contributed to the bitterness of the Fox war, ham- 
pered the operations of the French and proved 
profitable for themselves. Indeed, the red fur- 
hunters, although having a decided preference for 
the French, whose mercurial natures were so 
readily adaptable to the habits of the barbarians and 
to whom they were often allied by ties of blood as 
well as of comradery, were quick to perceive that 
the English traders, with all their lack of courtesy 
towards the natives and their evident greed, 

89 



90 UNDER THE BRITISH FLAG. 

offered the best prices for peltries. English over- 
tures for trade were therefore gladly met whenever 
opportunity offered, and the Indians could do barter 
without attracting the notice of their French 
friends, who deemed such traffic akin to treason- 
able connivance with an enemy, 

A few days after the surrender of Canada, Major 
Robert Rocjers's famous ran2"ers — the heroes of 
Lakes George and Champlain — were dispatched 
to take immediate possession of the important 
posts of Detroit, Mackinaw, Sault Ste. Marie, 
Green Bay and St. Josephs. But there were 
numerous delays, and the French commander at 
Detroit had no sooner lowered the flag of France 
and reluctantly transferred his charge to the plucky 
Rogers, than winter closed in upon this advance 
guard of England, and the upper posts were un- 
disturbed until the following year. 

The first of October, 1761, Captain Belfour of the 
80th, and Lieutenant James Gorrell of the 60th, or 
Royal American regiment, set out from Mackinaw 
with a detachment selected from both commands, 
to take possession of the now abandoned French 
post at Green Bay. They arrived on the twelfth 
of the month, and found the place temporarily 
deserted. The establishment consisted of a rotten, 
tumble-down stockade, inclosing a number of 
roofless cabins originally designed for soldiers 



UNDER THE BRITISH FLAG. 91 

and traders, while a few families of Menomonee 
Indians had their wigwams just without the walls. 
The savages were at this time off upon their 
usual winter's hunt, while the French traders were 
just then in the Sioux country, beyond the 
Mississippi. 

Belfour remained two days at Green Bay ; long 
enough to christen this dismal outpost with the 
high-sounding title of Fort Edward Augustus, 
and then returned to Mackinaw, leaving Gorrell 
with one sergeant, a corporal and fifteen privates, 
to hold for King George all that portion of 
the American wilderness lying west of Lake 
Michigan. 

It was a lonesome winter for the little garrison 
at Fort Edward Augustus. Upon the banks of 
the Mississippi, eight hundred miles of canoe 
journey to the southwest, were a half-dozen small 
French villages, with a floating population of per- 
haps twenty-five hundred souls ; the nearest white 
settlement was the meager trading hamlet of 
Mackinaw, two hundred and forty miles away ; 
while between Green Bay and St. Joseph's,* the 
only other civilized community accessible from 
Lake Michigan, there lay a dangerous water route 
of four hundred miles. All between was savagery. 
Here and there a wretched Indian community had 

* The site of the modern citv of South Bend, Ind. 



92 UNDER THE BRITISH EL AG. 

its conical tepees of bark and matted reeds pitched 
on the shore of a lake, at the foot of some portage 
trail or on the banks of a forest stream. Hard by 
were their fields of corn and pumpkins, rudely 
cultivated in the summer time by women, boys and 
slaves — the latter generally from the Pawnees 
and other tribes to the south, acquired by barter 
from man-hunting bands which annually raided the 
southern belt to obtain material for this trafific in 
humanity. 

When the first snowflakes filled the air and 
brittle ice along the shores gave warning of a 
speedy close of navigation, these summer habita- 
tions were abandoned and the Indians scattered in 
small family groups through far-away hunting- 
orounds, returning only in April or May to make 
their planting for another season. In former times, 
when the crop was in, the bucks took their winter's 
stock of peltries down the waterways to the near- 
est fur-trader's station and there spent a few weeks 
in wordy traffic and debauchery : at first to Mon- 
treal, then to Fort Frontenac, then to Detroit and 
Mackinaw or Green Bay, St. Joseph's., or some of 
the old French posts on the Upper Mississippi, 
with an occasional secret trip to their more liberal 
patrons, the British traders at Albany. But the 
post trafific gave way, at last, to personal visitation on • 
the part of tlie traders. Every winter the hunting 



UNDER THE BRITISH EL AG. 93 

bands were followed throuoh the woods and alone 
the streams by traders and their agents, the furs 
being bargained for almost before the animals 
which wore them were stiffened in death. The 
natural result of this method, which lasted unto our 
own day, was that the improvident savages spent 
their gains on the spot, as fast as acquired, re- 
turning to their summer homes as poor as when 
tliey left them, and absolutely dependent for exist- 
ence on the miserable crop of corn until the fol- 
lowing winter. The life of our Northwestern 
Indians was not one of sweetness and light ; it 
yielded no material for romance. The squaws 
were overworked and became wrinkled haQ;'s and 
great-grandmothers at fifty ; the bucks were gen- 
erally cruel, immoral, slothful and always improvi- 
dent; filth and squalor everywhere prevailed, 
sanitary laws were unknown, and between the ex- 
tremes of gluttonly excesses and prolonged famine, 
the Indian fell an early victim to disease. The 
red man is usually depicted as silent and astute. 
He was, under natural conditions, often hilarious 
and generally unthinking — a temper well fitting 
him to be the boon companion of happy-go-lucky 
French voyagcurs and courcui^s de bois. 

And thus, while Gorrell's little band of red-coats 
shivered in their dilapidated post on the far-away 
marshes of Green Bay, the gloomy forest wilds be- 



94 UNDER THE BRITISH EL AG. 

fore them, to the north, to the south and to the 
west, harbored hundreds of little camps of savage 
hunters and demi-savage traders, wherein the 
change of political ownership was being sharply 
discussed and the attitude of Wisconsin Indians 
determined. 

The English garrison had introduced two traders 
upon the scene — one McKay of Albany, and one 
Goddard from Montreal ; but they do not appear to 
have been at first successful in their venture. The 
winter passed in repairing the fort and securing 
fuel, with no small difficulty, from the distant forest. 
Now and then small squads of Indians came strag- 
gling in from the hunting camps, spies sent to feel 
the British pulse ; being well treated they invari- 
ably returned to the woods in good spirits and 
helped prepare the way for an era of friendship, 
although the French did their best to poison the 
minds of their dusky friends against the overtures 
of Gorrell. 

In the spring, when the bands came in, verbal 
treaties were made with the neighboring Menom- 
onees, Winnebagoes and Ottawas, Gorrell being 
forced to literally "eat dog" with his Algonkin 
friends and school himself in the not difficult art 
of forest oratory. Here, as at their other wilder- 
ness outposts, the British soon won the respect of 
the Indians. While never intimately associating 



UNDER THE BRITISH FIAG. 95 

with the red men — inclined indeed to rather 
brusque and contemptuous treatment of them, in a 
social way — the fastidious English made up with 
diplomacy and the exercise of shrewd business 
capacity for what they lost in failing to treat 
with the aborigines on an equal footing. Fair 
words, a judicious distribution of presents and 
the best ruling prices for furs, captivated the 
Indian heart. 

. The episode of the Pontiac war disturbed these 
pleasant relations for a time, but when the savages 
of the Northwest were at last overawed by superior 
force they became once more the firm and lasting- 
friends of the British. The latter were also politic 
in securinor the adhesion of the coiiretirs de bois 
and other French and half-breed elements, so 
closely intermingled with the Indian life. French- 
men and mixed bloods were freely given positions 
as traders' clerks, interpreters and voyageui's, while 
military commissions, medals and uniforms were 
issued to those having especial influence with the 
Indians ; thus both conquered races were soon 
made to feel that the change in political mastery 
was rather to their advantage than otherwise. This 
admirable policy of the British government — so 
sharply contrasted, in after days, with that lack of 
conciliation generally shown by native Americans 
in their treatment of the savages — stood England 



96 UNDER THE BRITISH EL AG. 

in eood stead in the Northwest, duringr the wars of 
the Revolution and iS 12-15, ^* ^^'il^ ^^ hereafter 
seen. 

It was not until the tenth of February, 1763, 
that France formally handed over to England her 
vast territory east of the Mississippi River. 

In April, partly in a spirit of revenge for private 
wrongs, partly inspired by personal ambition and 
largely by patriotism, Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, 
commenced to organize a conspiracy of Nortb- 
western Indians for the overthrow of the new 
British garrisons. 

The sad story of the massacre at Fort Macki- 
naw, on the fourth of June, is a familiar one in 
Western annals. Captain Etherington, Lieutenant 
Leslie and eleven other Englishmen had been 
saved from the fort by friendly Ottawas and taken 
in canoes to L'Arbre Croche. On the eleventh, 
Etherington sent a letter by an Ottawa messenger 
to Lieutenant Gorrell, informing him of the tragedy 
and commanding him to evacuate Green Bay and 
come to their relief. The letter arrived at Fort 
Edward Augustus on the fifteenth. Gorrell at 
once assembled a council of Menomonees, of whose 
attachment he was the most assured, announced 
that he was going to Mackinaw to restore order 
and asked them to take care of the fort in his 
absence. Sacs, Foxes and Winnebagoes tlien ap- 



UXDER THE BRITISH FLAG. 97 

peared on the scene in considerable numbers, and 
all were at once loaded with presents. 

At first there was some desire upon the part of 
the Indians to prevent the departure of the garrison, 
Pontiac's emissaries having made them fearful of 
the consequence of offending him. But at this 
critical juncture, it fortunately happened that a dele- 
gation of Sioux arrived and espoused the cause of 
Gorrell. Their especial enemies the Chippewas 
being engaged in the support of Pontiac, the Sioux 
proposed to help the English and threatened dire 
punishment to those who dared interfere with the 
commandant's wishes. 

This message from across the Mississippi decided 
the question and all were now eager to assist at the 
embarkation. On the twenty-first of June, the lit- 
tle fleet paddled out of Fox River into the broad 
expanse of Green Bay, making a rather imposing 
array, for the garrison battcaux were escorted by 
canoes containing ninety painted warriors gaily 
bedecked with feathers and sinQrinq- their war-sonss 
in anticipation of greeting the foe. They had a 
fair passage through " Death's Door " and across 
Lake Michigan, arriving at L'Arbre Croche on the 
thirtieth. After many councils and some danger- 
ous delays, the united garrisons set out on the 
eighteenth of July, via the great northern route of 
the Ottawa River, for Montreal, which they reached 



98 UNDER THE BRITISH FLAG. 

on the thirteenth of August. Mackinaw was re- 
occupied the following year, but the British flag 
was not again seen waving over a Wisconsin fort 
until the temporary invasion of 1814. 

The sudden departure of Gorrell left the fur-trade 
at Green Bay once more in the hands of the French. 
The Enolish traders had left their stocks with 
Creole clerks, and very soon the post settled down 
into a more or less permanent French trading vil- 
lage, the precursor of the Green Bay, Fort Howard 
and Depere of to-day. Many of the new-comers 
cultivated small plats of land on both sides of Fox 
River — the ribbon-like strips so familiar in French- 
Canadian cbies — and ever since that day the 
habitan has retained his foothold upon the district 
and indelibly impressed upon it his well-marked 
characteristics. 

His system of agriculture was of the simplest 
kind. The rude wheeled plows were of wood 
throughout, the straight beam ending in a cross- 
bar lashed with thongs to the horns of oxen, which 
were then more commonly used than horses. 
Often a crooked stick did duty as a colter. The 
crops were chiefly of wheat and vegetables, no 
more being raised than was absolutely necessary 
to existence. A flower garden was an indispensable 
adjunct to every cabin, which was a crude struct- 
ure, either of logs or frame, roofed with strips of 



UNDER THE BRITISH EI AG. 99 

bark or thatched with straw, and everywhere put 
together with wooden pegs in default of nails. 
These houses were small, and for the most part of 
but one story, the attic lighted by a profusion of 
dormer windows. The furnishings were slight, 
tne beds being the chief articles of furniture; the 
floors were covered with Indian mats, the fireplaces 
were ample, neatness everywhere prevailed, and 
the general aspect was one of rude and unpreten- 
tious comfort. The cattle ranged upon the com- 
mon ; the men, in their moccasins and blanket 
suits, met and roystered in the inevitable tavern, in 
front of which was ever a row of little, two-wheeled 
carts ; the aproned women gossiped over the picket 
fences which separated the narrow holdings — nar- 
row, so as to give each a front upon the river high- 
way ; everywhere was evident the French desire 
for social intercourse, the love of aggregation, the 
capacity for making the most of to-day with little 
regard for the morrow. 

Just as the reins were slipping from the hands of 
the governor of New France, Vaudreuil, that pliant 
tool of his friends, made a grant to his brother 
Rigaud, of the Green Bay fort and an extensive 
fur-producing tract west of Lake Michigan, embrac- 
ing a goodly portion of what is now Wisconsin. 
This Rigaud was an arrant rascal ; when he and 
Marin were in control of affairs at Green Bay, they 



lOO UNDER 2 HE BRITISH FLAG. 

had stolen three hundred and twelve thousand 
francs by a system of false vouchers and misappro- 
priation of Government property quite general 
among army officers throughout New France at 
this time. Rigaud sold his claim to one William 
Grant, who was financially backed by a number of 
English merchants in Canada. But the London 
governnient when it gained control, promptly re- 
jected Grant's claim, which was never after heard 
of. Thus Green Bay was left to its own resources, 
and the habitans were fortunately undisturbed by 
proprietary interference. 

Augustin and Charles Michel de Langlade, father 
and son, were decidedly the most picturesque 
characters in this little group of fur-trading French- 
men, who can hardly be called pioneers as we of 
Anglo-Saxon blood understand the term, and the 
date of whose advent cannot be accurately deter- 
mined — for they were essentially rovers and some 
had, like Hood's tars, a wife and progeny in every 
port. The Langlades appear to have been among 
the first whites to call Green Bay their home, 
although we have seen that other French traders 
were stationed there much earlier; it is believed, 
however, that these latter kept their families in 
Mackinaw and merely regarded themselves as tem- 
porary occupants of Wisconsin soil. The Langlades 
' — the elder of whom had owned a stockade at Green 



UNDER THE BRITISH EI AG. lOl 

Bay since the middle of the century — removed 
their domestic estabhshment thither soon after 
Gorrell's departure, and may therefore be deemed 
as amon^ the fathers of the settlement. They were 
extensive fur-traders and commanded the confidence 
and practical control of large bands of Wisconsin 
Indians. Charles had become especially well- 
known as a partisan leader in the conflicts which 
resulted in the downfall of New France — havinor 
been foremost in the attack on Braddock and head- 
ing Wisconsin Indians on the Plains of Abraham — 
and was continued by the British in the position 
which he had held under Vaudreuil, of superintend- 
ent of Indians and militia captain for the district 
of Green Bay. It is claimed by his friendly biog- 
raphers that this Langlade, who was present on 
the occasion, was instrumental in saving Etherino:- 
ton and other whites at the massacre of Mackinaw; 
but the historian Parkman, in his " Conspiracy of 
Pontiac," takes the vievv^ that Langlade was a passive 
spectator of the atrocities on that occasion and 
encouraged the Indians by merciless indifference 
to the Englishmen's appeals for his protection. 

We have seen that La Salle established a post 
either on the Wisconsin River, or at its mouth, 
as early as 1683, for the trade in buffalo skins; and 
that Perrot built his Fort St. Nicholas near the 
mouth of the same stream. But these stations fell 



IU2 UNDER THE BRITISH EI AG. 

into disuse either before or during the prolonged 
difficulties with the Foxes, and ceased to be recoo-- 
nized on the maps of the period. The broad, high 
prairie lying on the east bank of the Mississippi, a 
mile or two above the marshy delta of the Wisconsin, 
had, from the earliest days of the European con- 
quest, been a convenient and favorite rendezvous for 
Indians and traders. 

Here, each autumn, the traders and engages on 
their return from Mackinaw or the lower country, 
by way of the Fox-Wisconsin route, would tarry for 
awhile and often hold high carnival before setting 
out in small parties for either the Upper or the 
Lower Mississippi, or for the country of the Sioux. 
Here again, in the spring, they were wont to as- 
semble after the winter's hunt and make up their 
fleets for the homeward journey ; as well as to meet 
occasional delegations from some of the more re- 
mote tribes to the west and northwest, bringing 
furs with them for disposal to the whites. Here 
innumerable councils were held with the red bar- 
barians of the forest and plain, much tobacco and 
brandy consumed and protracted oratory indulged 
in ; while at night about the great camp fires 
stalked and lounged sleek, wily savages clad in 
gay and greasy blankets, and swarthy, devil-may- 
care Creoles, their dress a curious mixture of 
French and Indian : gaudy mob-caps, curiously- 




THE PERILS OF THE FRONTIER. 



UNDER THE BRITISH ELAG. I05 

colored neckcloths, leather shirts, fringed leggins 
and moccasins resplendent in the quills of the 
"fretful porcupine;" a motley company this, but 
for the time jolly fellows all, cheek by jowl — the 
air frequently resounding with the wild cries of 
the medicine dancers, and the quavering, metallic 
notes of the voyagairs as they chanted in minor 
key their quaint melodies : rude songs of the voy- 
age, of the chase, of love and the wassail. 

Thus Prairie du Chien, or the " Prairie of the 
Dog" — so called from Le Chien, a village chief 
who long made this prairie his summer camping 
ground — became quite as famous as Green Bay 
itself. But it was not until 1726 that any white 
person is known to have claimed Prairie du Chien 
as his home. In that year, one Cardinell, a French 
soldier who had served in one of the raids against 
the Foxes, settled down here with a wife whom he 
brought from the Lower St. Lawrence — possibly 
the first white woman to settle as far west as this. 
Cardinell became a hunter, but in the summer 
cultivated a small patch of ground on the prairie, 
after the crude, hap-hazard fashion of the habiiaus. 
His wife survived him and lived until 1827, then 
accredited with being one hundred and thirty years 
of age. She is said to have married a dozen hus- 
bands in succession, after Cardinell's death, no 
sooner burying the old love than taking up with a 



Io6 UNDER THE B REUS] I ELAG. 

new, being by all means the most thrifty widow 
who figures in the annals of Wisconsin. 

These early P^rench settlements were not imbued 
with the spirit of growth, or indeed of continuity. 
The Cardinells were many years alone on the 
prairie. By 1755, there were not more than half a 
dozen families on the spot, and they were addicted 
to rovino- after the Indian fashion. That year, the 
crovernmentof New France re-established its old post 
there ; but eleven years later, Jonathan Carver does 
not appear to have found either fort or white 
settlers at the mouth of the Wisconsin. In any 
event, he makes no mention of an establishment 
there, in the journal of his tour. 

During 1764-65, because of Indian disturbances, 
traders were not permitted by the British to pro- 
ceed into the western country farther than Mack- 
inaw, nor to bring furs from west of Lake Michigan 
to the lower country. On account of this embargo 
on commerce, the little coterie of French traders 
at Green Bay opened negotiations for the sale of 
their peltries at New Orleans, where their country- 
men had acquired a strong foothold. But these 
overtures alarming the English authorities, the 
embargo was raised and once more Saxon traders 
and travelers entered the region of Wisconsin and 
the Far West. 

In 1766, Captain Jonathan Carver, first a medical 



UNDER THE BE/TJSH FLAG. 1 07 

student, then a Massachusetts militia officer during 
the protracted struggle which ended in the fall 
of New France, and lastly an inveterate traveler, 
conceived the notion that he could discover a north- 
west passage to the Pacific Ocean by way of the 
Upper Mississippi. After a toilsome journey of 
some fifteen hundred miles, from Boston to Green 
Bay, which he reached the eighteenth of Septem- 
ber, he ascended the Fox and descended the Wis- 
consin, thence proceeding by the Mississippi to the 
Falls of St. Anthony and the adjacent country. 
Afterwards ascending the Minnesota River, he 
wintered with the Sioux of the plains and the fol- 
lowing spring reached Lake Superior byway of the 
Chippewa and St. Croix Rivers, from whence he 
was obliged to return home disappointed in his 
ambitious expectations, but nevertheless having 
made a remarkable tour, the details of which he 
gave to the world in a book of travels which was 
an important contribution to the geographical 
literature of his time. 

Not far north from the site of the modern city 
of St. Paul, Minnesota, Carver found a remarkable 
sandstone cave, which was used as a council cham- 
ber by some of the neighboring Indian bands. He 
claimed to have attended such a council on the 
first of May, 1767, and to have been the recipient 
of a considerable orant of land at the hands of 



io8 UNDER THE BRITISH EL AG. 

his generous Sioux hosts. This tract, as described 
in the deed signed by the granting chiefs, included 
the sites of the present cities of St. Paul and 
Minneapolis, some of the choicest lands in Minne- 
sota and the whole or portions of the counties of 
Pierce, Pepin, Dunn, Clark, Buffalo, Trempealeau, 
Jackson, Chippewa, Eau Claire, Polk, Barron, Tay- 
lor, Price and Marathon in Wisconsin. The claim 
was transferred to others by Carver's children, for 
the sum of fifty thousand pounds sterling, and in 
1822 the Mississippi Land Company was organized 
in New York for its prosecution before Congress. 
That body, after an elaborate investigation, decided 
against the petitioners ; but long after the decision, 
lands under the Carver title were sold in Wiscon- 
sin and Minnesota by Eastern speculators, and frau- 
dulent deeds of this character are to-day on record 
at St. Paul and Prairie du Chien. 

During the War of the Revolution, Wisconsin 
was chiefly notable as a recruiting ground for 
Indian allies for the British army. Charles Michel 
de Langlade and his half-nephew, Charles Gautier 
de Vcrville, were constantly employed in this work 
by the commandant at Mackinaw and were as suc- 
cessful as could be hoped for among a vacillating 
people, who were always hanging back for larger 
rewards, and required persistent coaxing and not 
infrequent threats. 



UNDER THE BRITISH EI AG. 1 09 

The country north of the Ohio River was claimed 
by the British as a part of the province of Quebec, 
but Virginia also laid claim to it. This vast 
region, styled the Northwest, contained among 
others three rude stockade forts — Kaskaskia and 
Cahokia in what is now Illinois, and Vincennes, in 
the present Indiana — which were in themselves 
the keys to the situation. The British held these 
places, but not with sufficient garrisons. So long 
as Indian scalping parties could be raised north of 
the river and let loose upon the settlers who were 
just then pouring into Kentucky and Tennessee, 
not only was the further colonization of the South- 
west impracticable, but the British were given an 
opportunity to harass the southern coast settle- 
ments through their back door! 

In 1778, therefore, General George Rogers Clark, 
with the authority of Virginia, advanced into the 
Northwest with a little army of Kentuckians ; and, 
as the result of a series of remarkable exploits, 
which figure among the most romantic incidents in 
American history, seized Kaskaskia, Cahokia and 
Vincennes and held the disputed territory for the 
United States till the close of the War. From 
his headquarters at Kaskaskia, he sent active 
emissaries among the Wisconsin Indians and in- 
tensified among them the" prevalent feeling of 
doubt, besides winnins: over several Fox and Win- 



no UNDER THE BRITISH ELAG. 

nebago chiefs to at least a position of neutrality. 
Indeed Godefroy Linctot, a trader of some impor- 
tance at Prairie du Chien, forsook the British 
cause in the spring of 1779 and yielded so far to 
Clark's advances as to openly side with the Amer- 
icans and lead a picturescjue company of four or 
five hundred French and half-breed horsemen in sev- 
eral important expeditions connected with Clark's 
movements in the West. 

It was in October, 1777, that Gautier started 
from Montreal upon his first recruiting expedition 
through Wisconsin. He proceeded by way of the 
Fox River, across country to the Rock River and 
thence northwesterly to Prairie du Chien, talking 
with traders and Indian delegations at Green Bay 
and several points en route, and sending runners 
with war belts and presents to outlying bands. 
One of these overtures was directed to " Milwaki," * 
where a French trader was stationed in the midst 
of a polyglot village clustered about the mouth of 
the river and on the bluffs overlooking Lake Michi- 
gan. From Prairie du Chien, where he met a 
trader whom, in his official report to General Guy 
Carleton he styles Sieur Lise, he sent out run- 
ners among the Sioux. 

He found that " the Bostonniens," as he calls the 
Americans, had preceded him among some of the 



* Milwaukee. 



UNDER THE BRITISH EL AG. Ill 

tribes, and that there was much disaffection in con- 
sequence ; although the Spaniards at St. Louis 
had taken care to inform the Indians that the 
Americans had " Venimous and empoisoned 
Mouths," and must not be heeded. Gautier was, 
however, enabled to gather up two hundred and 
ten Sioux, Sac, Fox and Winnebago warriors and 
their families and deliver them in June, 1778, to 
the Indian agent, Langlade, as pledged to aid the 
British. 

These allies were sent on to Detroit and were a 
part of the hybrid expedition under Colonel Henry 
Hamilton, which recaptured Vincennes in Decem- 
ber following, from the captain and one private 
whom Clark had left there as a winter orarrison. 
The gallant American, however, soon won back the 
fort and sent Hamilton as a prisoner to Virginia. 

We find Langlade and Gautier frequently in 
Wisconsin on similar errands, throughout the con- 
tinuance of the war. One notable Indian expedition 
led by Gautier, under orders from Major De Pey- 
ster, then in command at Mackinaw, was a raid in 
the summer of 1779 upon Le Pe, an important 
French fur-trading station within the present city 
limits of Peoria, Illinois. It was feared that the 
rude stockade there might become a harbor for the 
Americans, and it was consequently burned by 
Gautier, who thereupon beat a hasty retreat, for 



112 UNDER THE BRITISH FLAG. 

Clark's influence had now well permeated the 
Illinois country, and " rebels " were becoming un- 
comfortably numerous both among Indians and 
traders. 

Early in 1780 news was received at Detroit and 
Mackinaw of Spain's declaration of war against 
Great Britain. The western commandants were 
notified by General Haldimand, governor of Canada, 
that an English fleet and army under General 
Campbell, were to ascend the Mississippi to attack 
New Orleans and other Spanish river communities, 
and that it was advisable that an expedition pro- 
ceed southward by the river to co-operate with 
Campbell's. The Spanish were at the same time 
threatening Natchez and other English settlements 
on the east bank of the Mississippi. 

A small detachment of troops, with the neces- 
sary half-breed interpreters, was sent among the 
Sioux west and southwest of Lake Superior, with 
the effect of inducing Chief Wabashaw to collect 
several hundred warriors of that nation for the 
proposed expedition. This party was met at 
Prairie du Chien by the French traders Hesse, 
Du Charme and Calve, and the interpreters Rocque 
and Key. These men were in command of a 
motley throng of Indians, chiefly made up of 
Menomonees, Winnebagoes, Sacs and Foxes who 
had been rendezvoused at the Fox-Wisconsin 



UNDER THE BRITISH FLAG. II3 

portage by Hesse, and a contingent of Chippewas 
under Chief Matchekewis, who had been a promi- 
nent character in the Mackinaw massacre of 1763. 

The combined forces, now numbering seven 
hundred and fifty whites, mixed-bloods and red- 
skins, moved slowly down the river towards St. 
Louis, the first object of the proposed attack. Off 
the mouth of Turkey River they met and captured 
a barge-load of provisions in charge of an Amer- 
ican trader and a Creole crew. The prisoners were 
at once sent north, by way of the Fox and Wis- 
consin, to Mackinaw, while the goods were appro- 
priated to the commissariat of the expedition. On 
the twenty-sixth of May the outlying cabins of St. 
Louis were raided, and about a dozen persons shot 
and scalped by the screeching savages, who were 
soon driven off by the neighboring inhabitants. 
A small detached band of Indians crossed the river 
and looted the outskirts of Cahokia, on thelllinois 
bank, but otherwise the foray was a dismal failure, the 
frightened marauders flying in squads to Chicago 
and Prairie du Chien and there quickly disbanding. 

The British officials, who had eng^asfed Lano^lade 
to descend the Illinois by way of the Chicago por- 
tage and unite his forces with those of the invaders, 
thought the attack on St. Louis altogether too pre- 
cipitate, as it was made before Langlade's appear- 
ance on the scene, and bitterly accused Hesse, 



I 14 UNDER 2'HE BRITISH FLAG. 

Du Charme and Calve with bald-faced treachery. 
And there seems to be little doubt that this thrifty 
trio were but faint-hearted partisans, ready to sell 
their influence to the highest bidder, or to both, 
and chiefly anxious to be at the close of the war 
on friendly terms with the victors, whoever they 
might be. 

Indeed, this was the attitude of most of the French 
traders in the Northwest, who in this respect 
were quite like the Indians themselves. For 
nearly a century a bone of contention between 
conflicting races, it mattered but little to them who 
were their political owners so long as they were to 
have any. They prudently affected friendship for 
those in immediate control of their territory and 
trade, be the latter French, English, Spanish or 
American ; but experience had led them to value 
the importance of cultivating the good graces 
of the enemy, who might by some sudden turn 
of fortune become their masters. Hence we find 
these simple but wily Indians, traders, coureurs 
de bois, voyageurs and habitans constantly playing 
double, often waging a sly guerrilla warfare upon 
both parties to the fray, selling themselves to who- 
ever would buy and making promises not intended 
to be fulfilled. Generally, it was not until the out- 
come seemed well determined, that these people 
took sides definitely ; thus we see the ranks of the 



UNDER THE BRITISH FLAG. 1 15 

western forest allies of either the Americans or the 
British, swelling or depleting just as the quality of 
the war news was hopeful or depressing. This un- 
certainty of savage or demi-savage support, has 
ever been a feature of American frontier wars, the 
side the most dependent upon Indian support 
having invariably lost in the long run. And this 
was the position of the British during the Revolu- 
tionary War in the Northwest. 

The British navy upon the upper lakes, in this 
period, was chiefly available for the transport of 
troops and stores. This division of the " upper 
lakes " included Lake Erie, whereon were em- 
ployed some half-dozen small craft. The sloops 
Welcome, Felicity and Archangel appear to have 
been the only vessels operating on Lake Michi- 
gan, transportation on Lake Superior apparently 
beins: restricted to traders' bateaux. 

An interesting voyage was undertaken on Lake 
Michigan, in 1779, by Samuel Robertson, master of 
the Felicity. Robertson made the circuit of the 
lake, between October 21st and November 5th, en- 
countering exceptionally stormy weather. Traders 
and Indians were visited and supplied at the mouths 
of Michigan, Kalamazoo and Grand rivers, on the 
Michigan shore, Milwaukee Bay was reached the 
third of November, and here Robertson found a 
French trader whom he calls " Morong." 



Il6 UNDER THE BRUTISH FLAG. 

This man, who professed a warm attachment for 
His Britannic Majesty, was given a quantity of 
presents and stores for the neighboring Indians ; 
and from him information was received of another 
French trader, named Fay, located at Two Rivers, 
some fifty miles north of Milwaukee, on the lake 
shore. Robertson has left us his log of the voy- 
age,* a curious specimen of English composition, 
as witness the following paragraph from his ex- 
perience at " Millwakey : " 

" Mr. Gautley gives them [Morong and chief 
Lodegard] a present 3 bottles of Rum & half 
carrot of Tobaco, and also told them the manner 
governor Sinclair could wish them to Behave, at 
which they seemd weall satisfeyed, he also gave 
instructions Monsieur St. Pier to Deliver some 
strings of Wampum and a little Keg of rum to the 
following & a carrot of Tobaco in governor Sin- 
clairs name; likewise the manour how to behave; 
he also gave another small Kegg with some strings 
of Wampum with a carrot of Tobaco to Deliver 
the indeans at Millwakey which is a mixed Tribe 
of different nations." 

An English trader named John Long arrived at 
the little French and Indian hamlet of Green Bay 
in June, 1780, en route to Prairie du Chien, where 
Lanelade, in anticiuation of his comino-, had accu- 

* Wisconsin Historical Collections, \o\. XI. pp. 203-12. 



UNDER THE BRITISH FLAG. II7 

mulated a quantity of furs ; for that active partisan's 
mission among the Wisconsin Indians had some- 
thing of a commercial as well as of a military char- 
acter. Long spent some days at Green Bay and 
tells us in his gossipy journal that the houses of 
both races there were covered with birch-bark while 
the rooms were decorated with bows and arrows 
and more modern weapons. He obtained from the 
people, without difificulty, an abundant supply of 
deer and bear meat, and Indian corn, besides melons 
and fruit. The settlement at this time did not 
contain much more than fifty whites, old and young, 
divided into six or seven families. The men, for 
the most part, were engaged as assistants ox engages 
to the two or three traders; their winters were 
spent in the woods, while in summer they listlessly 
cultivated their small gardens, leading a narrow 
existence in which seasons of arduous labor en 
E/6y/^^^ alternated with periods of sloth and thought- 
less merriment. 

In 1 78 1, Captain Patrick Sinclair, then the Eng- 
glish lieutenant-governor for the Mackinaw district, 
in which was included the country west of Lake 
Michigan, held a treaty with the Indians, at which 
he individually purchased from them the island of 
Mackinaw and the settlements of Green Bay and 
Prairie du Chien, with all intervening territory. 
But the Revolutionary War closed with the follow- 



Il8 UNDER THE BRITISH FLAG. 

ino- vear and the entire Northwest, under the defini- 
tive treaty of peace in 1783, was, regardless of all 
private claims, apportioned to the United States, 
having been fairly won with the sword by George 
Roo-ers Clark and kept for our inheritance by the 
shrewd diplomacy of Franklin, Adams and Jay. 



CHAPTER V. 



ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 




ET US briefly recapitu- 
late the changes in 
political mastery. 
The region of which 
Wisconsin was a part, 
was Indian country, 
undisturbed by white 
intrusion, until Nico- 
let's discovery, in 
1634. What the 
French call " the Conquest " may be said to date 
from that year. In 1671, at Sault Ste. Marie, 
Saint-Lusson formally took possession of the North- 
west for France. The French surrendered their 
claims to England, in the treaty of February, 1763. 
On the seventh of October, that year, the king of 
England divided the greater part of his new pos- 
sessions on the American mainland into the three 
governments of Quebec, East Florida and West 
Florida — but the Northwest not being included in 

any of these districts was presumed to be left as 

119 



I20 ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 

the property of the coast colonies. In 1774, prob- 
ably with the purpose of hemming in the restless 
colonists to the Atlantic slope and thus preventing 
them from spreading westward of the Alleghanies 
and becoming a powerful people, Parliament passed 
what is known in history as the Quebec Act. This 
act attached the country north of the Ohio and 
west of Pennsylvania — the Northwest Territory 
of later days — to the province of Quebec and prac- 
tically placed its people under French law and 
Roman Catholic supervision. What is now Wis- 
consin was of course included in the region affected 
by the bill. The measure was not passed without 
sharp and protracted opposition in Parliament, and 
in America created such a storm of indignation as 
to be among the many causes which precipitated 
the Declaration of Independence, two years later. 
Thus the Quebec Act, so far as the Northwest was 
concerned, was on account of the American up- 
rising practically a dead-letter statute from the 
start. We have seen that under the treaty of peace 
with England, in 1783, the Northwest was conceded 
to tlie United States, England recognizing the 
Great Lakes as the international boundary. 

But the change in proprietorship was merely 
nominal. Great Britain still held her posts in the 
Northwest, on the ground that certain stipulations 
in the treaty of peace had not been fulfilled by the 



ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 12 i 

United States. As a matter of fact, the Revolu- 
tionary War was not over when the treaty of 1783 
was signed. Great Britain, for eleven years after 
this, was, to all intents and purposes, still waging 
war with Indian cat's-paws upon our trans- Alleghany 
region and eagerly contemplating the day when 
she could once more annex the coveted Northwest 
to the Province of Quebec. 

In 1787, the United States Congress adopted an 
ordinance rearing the country " beyond the River 
Ohio " into the Northwest Territory, and in the 
following spring a settlement was made under this 
ordinance, by Revolutionary veterans, at Marietta. 

There was already a sparse settlement of Ameri- 
cans * at what is now Cincinnati, at Clarksville and 
other places along the Ohio ; while small clumps of 
French and half-breed traders and voyageu7's were 
to be found at Fort Wayne, South Bend and Vin- 
cennes, in the present State of Indiana, at Peoria, 
Kaskaskia and Chartres, in the Illinois country, at 
Detroit and Sault Ste. Marie, in Michio:an, and at 
Green Bay, Prairie du Chien and La Pointe, in 
Wisconsin. A census of these widely scattered 
settlements at that time would not have revealed 
the presence in all that vast territory of over thirty 
thousand white persons. 



*The term " Americans," in this volume, is used in the customary sense — meaning the 
people of the United States. 



122 ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 

But the Indians were abundant. As the seasons 
went and came, the red savages drifted restlessly 
between planting field and hunting ground, now 
and then scalping American intruders on their 
domain when they could do so with impunity, but 
when close-pressed making treaties with their pale- 
face brethren with much display of barbaric elo- 
quence, coupled with endless ceremonial and 
profuse promises of life-long devotion to the cause 
of that natural foe who was relentlessly supplanting 
them in the homes of their fathers. Intimately 
minofled with these far-from-s^uileless children of 
the forest, with savage wives and half-savage chil- 
dren to tie them to the camp-fires of barbarism, 
were Frenchmen like the Wisconsin pioneers, Lang- 
lade and Gautier, whose interests were wrapped up 
in the fur-trade, a commerce necessarily antago- 
nistic to the advance of agricultural settlement. 
There were renegade whites, too, like the bloody- 
handed Pennsylvanian, Simon Girty, long the ter- 
ror of the border, who, bedaubed with ochre and 
bedecked in war-bonnet, hated like the savage and 
schemed like the white, bringing new and startling 
terrors into the ancient methods of Indian warfare. 

English officials spurred them on — French trad- 
ers, voyageurs and half-breed chiefs alike — making 
gifts of military commissions, gay uniforms, sup- 
plies and ammunition, and many a covert promise 



ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 12^ 

of some time coming to their aid with the king's 
army and driving out settlers from the natural 
home of the fur-trade. These English officers at 
the Northwestern posts secretly fomented disorder, 
kept alive the sparks of border conflagration — 
menaced the spread of the American colonies by 
the agency of the ambush and the scalping knife. 

In 1794, the Jay treaty provided for the evacua- 
tion by England of the posts still held by her 
within the American boundaries. This was in 
November. In August, Mad Anthony Wayne had, 
at the head of a gallant little army of pioneers and 
United States troops, humbled the Maumees at 
the famous Battle of the Fallen Timbers, and 
broken the backbone of savage power in the North- 
west, thus practically closing the Revolutionary 
War. The date fixed for the evacuation was the 
first day of June, 1796, and Wisconsin may be said 
to have then become acknowledged American terri- 
tory for the first time. 

During this period of thirteen years, when Wis- 
consin was nominally a part of the United States, 
but still under the domination of England, there 
was but little growth worthy of the name. Yet, as 
we glance backward through the record, we find 
that seeds were then planted which were, after 
long lying dormant, destined to produce good re- 
sults. In 1 781, three French-Canadian voyageurs, 



124 ENGLISH DOMINATJON CONTINUED. 

Giard, Ange and Antaya by name, settled at 
Prairie du Chien and made there what may be 
called the first permanent establishment, for the 
Cardinells were rovers. Land titles date from 
this settlement of 1781. 

It has been stoutly claimed that in 1789, a French 
Creole blacksmith and trader, named Jean Baptiste 
Mirandeau, reared a log shop and trading shanty at 
the mouth of Milwaukee River, hard by the poly- 
glot Indian village which had long been located 
there, and thus became the first white settler of 
what developed into the Wisconsin metropolis. 
But this historic claim is a doubtful one ; it is at 
least probable that Mirandeau did not build his 
smithy's forge on the shores of Milwaukee Bay 
until eight or ten years later, after Vieau's arrival. 
We have already seen that bluff old Captain Rob- 
ertson found a trader at Milwaukee, in 1779, whom 
he called " Morong," and it is recorded that another 
Frenchman was engaged in Indian commerce there 
as early as 1762. But these were spasmodic enter- 
prises. In 1795, Jacques Vieau, as agent of the 
Northwest Company, established fur-trading posts 
at Kewaunee, Sheboygan, Manitowoc and Milwau- 
kee, and made Milwaukee his winter home until 
1 8 18, when he introduced Solomon Juneau to the 
scene. Juneau had married Vieau's sprightly 
daughter, Josette, and succeeded to his father- 



ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. I 25 

in-lavv's trade. The younger man is usually ac- 
corded the credit of being the pioneer of Mil- 
waukee, because he was the owner of the land 
upon which the village plat was afterwards laid 
out, and was found in possession of the site by the 
earliest American settlers from the Eastern States. 
But old Jacques Vieau led the way, and his ser- 
vices as a pioneer of civilization deserve more rec- 
ognition at the hands of the people of Milwaukee 
than they have received. Juneau has a park and 
an avenue named after him ; and in the one and near 
the head of the other, there has been erected a 
noble bronze statue of the wily old Frenchman who 
first sold village lots to Milwaukeeans, over half a 
century ago. Vieau, on the other hand, has been 
ignored by the generations which succeeded him, 
and few there are who ever heard his name. 

For a century and a half the portage plain be- 
tween the Fox and the Wisconsin Rivers had been 
freely traversed by a motley procession of Indians, 
Jesuits, explorers, traders, voyageurs and soldiers. 
A well-beaten path had been formed here, each party 
either doing its own work of transportation across 
the narrow neck of land, a mile and a half in width, 
or employing the Indians of the neighborhood. In 
the spring of 1793, a trader and trapper named 
Laurent Barth, obtained from his dusky friends 
permission to set up in business at the portage as 



126 ENGLISH JDOAflNATJON CONTINUED. 

a forwarder. Barth engaged the services of a horse 
in the work and constructed a rude sort of wheeled 
barge upon which were slung the canoes and ba- 
teaux of his patrons. What with the profits of a 
small trade with the Indians and his occasional fees 
as a common carrier, Barth succeeded for a few 
years in making both ends meet in his household 
accounts, which was about all the average French 
trader of the olden time ever hoped to do. But in 
1798, another Creole, Jean Ecuyer, appeared at the 
portage and, having married the sister of the resi- 
dent Winnebago chief, was granted the privilege of 
starting an opposition line. Ecuyer had several 
horses and introduced improved methods, so that 
poor Barth was gradually driven to the wall. The 
ambitious Ecuyer opened a trading shanty ; about 
the same time Jacques Vieau came out with some 
ofoods from Milwaukee, and staid for a season or 
two ; then appeared Augustin Grignon and Jacques 
Porlier, of Green Bay, in 1801, and one Campbell 
in 1803. Barth withdrew at last, leaving Campbell 
and Ecuyer to fight it out between them. Laurent 
Filly was the transportation agent in 18 10, and 
during the War of 1812-15 Francis Le Roy carried 
on the business. We learn from an old invoice 
that Le Roy's charges were ten dollars for carrying 
an empty boat from one river to the other, and fifty 
cents per hundred pounds of merchandise. It is no 




IN THE KRITISH CAMP. (See pagt I42.) 



ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 129 

wonder that s:oods were almost worth their weight 
in gold by the time they reached the far-away camps 
of the Indian hunters. Joseph Rolette and lastly 
Pierre Paquette were, in later times, the carriers 
over the portage. But in 1829 a United States 
fort was reared here, at the meeting of the divergent 
waters, and a hybrid settlement sprung up about 
the walls, which grew into the prosperous Portage 
city of our own day. 

La Pointe, on Chequamegon Bay, in Lake Su- 
perior — first on the mainland, and afterwards on 
Madelaine Island — had been a trading post, off and 
on, ever since the days of our old friends Radisson 
and Groseilliers ; but upon the outbreak of the 
French War it had been deserted, and it was not 
until 1765 that the trade was re-established there 
with the Chippewas, this time under an English- 
man named Henry. The station grew to become 
the entrepot for the entire Chippewa country. 

In 1784, there were three traders at La Pointe. 
By iSoo, Michel Cadotte, a famous leader in North- 
western foreign commerce, set up his stockade on 
the island, and, marrying the daughter of an 
influential Chippewa chief, obtained a strong hold 
upon the affections and patronage of the tribe. 
Under the American Fur Company the Warrens 
were Cadotte's successors. They staid until the 
days of the fur trade were practically ended and La 



130 ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 

Pointe, under the new dispensation, ceased to be 
a commercial center. 

When the United States assumed the proprietor- 
ship of the Northwest it agreed to respect the rights 
of the Indians to whatever territory they then held 
as hunting grounds. The Indians, upon the other 
hand, were obliged to agree that they would sell 
their lands only to the general Government. Thus 
all of what is now Wisconsin was recognized as 
Indian country; the small French-Canadian settle- 
ments at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien remain- 
ing by native sufferance. 

Before the close of the eighteenth century, the 
Sac and Fox tribes had, in numerous assaults, 
been driven by the French from their old hunting 
grounds in the Fox and Wolf valleys. Forced 
into the country along the Mississippi River be- 
tween the mouths of the Wisconsin and Rock, 
they had in that section important villages and 
exercised control over the lead mines. But before 
the resistless march of white settlement Indian 
occupation was doomed. Colonization in the lead 
district was increasing yearly, and it seemed nec- 
essary to open a new farming district to the Illinois 
pioneers. 

In 1804 the Government made a treaty with the 
Sacs and Foxes by which these tribes ceded to 
the United States a tract that may be roughly de- 



ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 131 

scribed as the irregular triangle lying between the 
Illinois and Wisconsin rivers.* It embraced what 
is now Northwestern Illinois and Southwestern 
Wisconsin, and included the large lead district. 
This was one of the earliest purchases of Indian 
territory in the Northwest, but the details of the 
agreement were uncertain in phraseology, and a 
generation later led to misunderstanding which re- 
sulted, as we shall see, in the Black Hawk War and 
the forcible expulsion of the red men from the dis- 
puted tract. 

It was not until the close of the War of 181 2-1 5, 
that Wisconsin came really under the domination 
of Americans. After the treaty of 1794, British 
traders, with French and half-breed clerks and voy- 
ageurs, were still permitted free intercourse with 
Wisconsin savages and had substantial control of 
them. When the Pontiac uprising had been quelled 
and it was safe for British civilians to enter the 
Northwest, a small party of Scotch traders re-opened 
the fur trade, with headquarters at Mackinaw, and 
employed French voyageurs. In 1783, the North- 
west Company was formed, although not fully 
organized until four years later. This corporation 
proposed to become a rival of the powerful Hudson 
Bay Company and had its headquarters in Mon- 

* At the same time a considerable territory along the west bank of the Mississippi was 
ceded, together with a tract two miles square, just north of the mouth of the Wisconsin — the 
site of Prairie du Chien — upon which the Government was authorized to construct a fort. 



132 ENGLISH DOM I NATION CONTINUED. 

treal, with distributing jDoints at Detroit, Mackinaw, 
Sault Ste. Marie and Grand Portage.* Its clerks 
and voyageurs were wide travelers and carried the 
Company's trade throughout the far West, from 
Great Slave Lake on the north to the valleys of 
the Platte and the Arkansas on the south, and to 
the parks and basins of the Rocky Mountains. 
Goods were sent up the lakes from Montreal, either 
by relays of sailing vessels, with portages of mer- 
chandise and men at the Falls of Niagara and the 
Sault Ste. Marie, or by picturesque fleets of ba- 
teaux and canoes up the great Ottawa River and 
down French Creek into Georgian Bay of Lake 
Huron, from there scattering to the Company's 
various entrepots to the south, west and north. 

These Creole boatmen were a reckless set. 
They took life easily, but bore ill even the mildest 
restraints of the trading settlements ; their home 
was on the rivers and in the Indian camps, where 
they joyously partook of the most humble fare and 
on occasion were not averse to suffering extraor- 
dinary hardships in the service of their exacting 
bourgeois.^ Their pay was light, but their thoughts 



* The portage between Lake Superior and the waters emptying into the Lake of the 
Woods and Lake Winnepeg. The trading post was at the liead of a bay on the northwest 
coast qf Lake Superior, some five miles above (southwest of) the mouth of Pigeon River. 
From here, there was a carrying place nine miles in length, northward, to a widening of the 
Pigeon. The settlement was protected by a fort which was the great halting place of voy- 
ageurs and traders to and from Lake Superior and the Winnepeg, Athabasca and Great Slave 
Lake regions. Grand Portage was an important depot for the fur trade as early as 1737. 

t Master. 



ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 1 33 

were lighter, and the sepulchral arches of the forest 
rang with the gay laughter of these heedless ad- 
venturers ; while the pent-up valleys of our bluff- 
girted streams echoed the refrains of their rudely- 
melodious boating songs, which served the double 
purpose of whiling the idle hours away and meas- 
uring progress along the glistening waterways. 

In 1809, John Jacob Astor, then a rising power 
in the forest trade of the continent, secured a 
charter for the American Fur Company. His aim 
was to establish a trading post at the mouth of the 
Columbia River, near the extreme northwest corner 
of the United States, and to link this station with 
Mackinaw by means of forts planted along the Mis- 
souri River, which had been explored by Lewis and 
Clark a few years previous. Astor sent out two 
expeditions for the Pacific coast — one going by 
sea via Cape Horn, and the other overland via the 
Fox- Wisconsin route and the Missouri. The land 
party, in charge of Wilson P. Hunt and Ramsay 
Crooks, two of Astor's lieutenants in the fur trade, 
started from Mackinaw in their canoes, the twelfth 
of August, 1809, and reached Green Bay a few 
days later, where the daring explorers were regarded 
with much interest by the few habitans and Indians 
who were then settled there. Prairie du Chien was 
passed a fortnight later, the expedition arriving at 
St. Louis the third of September, en route for the 



134 ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 

ocean of the west. The thrilling tale of their fur- 
ther progress across the continent, is among the 
most familiar in American history, for Washington 
Irvine: has embalmed it in his fascinatinq- " Astoria." 

Another notable party passed over the Fox-Wis- 
consin waterway, the same season — Thomas Nutt- 
all, the botanist, and John Bradbury, the Scotch 
naturalist, both of them eminent among the scien- 
tific men of their day. They were on their way to 
the Missouri-River country to collect specimens 
for study, and took extended notes on Wisconsin 
flora and fauna. 

Astor bought a half-interest in the Mackinaw 
Company, a rival of the Northwest Company, in 
1811, and united his American Fur Company with 
the former, the new concern being entitled the 
Southwest Company. But the war with Great Brit- 
ain soon opened, the Northwest Company seized 
Astoria, the station founded by Astor at tlie mouth 
of the Columbia with such heroic zeal, and the 
Southwest Company was ruined. 

Tecumseh's uprising, in 181 1, involved many 
isolated bands of Wisconsin Indians, chiefly Chip- 
pewas, Winnebagoes, Pottawatomies, Sacs and 
Foxes, and not a few war chiefs of local renown 
participated in the battle of Tippecanoe, on the 
seventh of November. The English pursued their 
customary method of openly egging on the North- 



ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 135 

western savages in any contemplated assault on the 
American settlements, and the French fur-traders 
were unanimous in their support of the English 
policy. That policy was the preservation of the 
forests to the profitable fur trade and the conse- 
quent repression of the growth of agricultural set- 
tlement on the part of Americans. During the 
war of 181 2-1 5, which followed, nearly every Wis- 
consin trader held a commission in the British 
army, and the country between Lake Michigan and 
the Mississippi River was again an important re- 
cruiting ground for savage allies of England. 

The American policy assumed toward Great 
Britain, had for some years previous been one of 
weakness and vacillation, and retaliation for wrongs 
was confined to commercial restrictions which in- 
evitably failed of their intended effect. This 
Quaker-like conduct on our part served but to em- 
bolden the English, and aggressions and injuries 
were on the increase. Nowhere was this more 
evident than in the Northwest, where Americans 
were everywhere met with British insolence and 
Albion held our frontier in an iron grip. But at 
last, yielding to popular impatience, a more resolute 
tone was adopted at Washington, and by the act 
of June 18, 181 2, the United States declared war 
against Great Britain. 

The principal event of the War, in Wisconsin, 



136 ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 



was the capture by the British of the American 
fort at Prairie du Chien. General William Clark, 
of Lewis and Clark exploring fame, and a brother 
of George Rogers Clark, the Revolutionary hero, 
was at this time governor of Missouri Territory and 
as such commandant of the American forces in the 
Upper Mississippi country. Impressed with the 
importance of controlling the western outlet of the 
Fox-Wisconsin waterway, he dispatched Lieutenant 
Joseph Perkins with about one hundred and fifty 
volunteers and soldiers on board of a bullet-proof 
keel-boat, to Prairie du Chien. This was late in 
the fall of 181 3. By the time winter set in, Per- 
kins had erected a creditable stockade on the sum- 
mit of one of the large mounds which freely dot 
the prairie — mysterious relics of those ancient 
inhabitants of Wisconsin, whose earthworks occupy 
the sites of scores of our prosperous modern towns. 
Perkins divided his forces between the stockade, 
which he styled Fort Shelby, and the improvised 
gunboat which had transported them hither. The 
latter, seventy feet in length and bearing the name 
of Governor Clark Gunboat, No. i, was anchored 
in the middle of the Mississippi River, immediately 
in front of the fort, and mounted fourteen pieces 
of cannon, while the garrison ashore was protected 
by six pieces. During the prgtracted winter, the 
little band of troops had frequently to entertain 



ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 137 

squads of Indian spies, chiefly Winnebagoes, sent 
out by the English fur-trader, Robert Dickson, who 
was passing the season at Lake Winnebago, wdiere 
he had collected a large number of red men in 
preparation for an active spring campaign against 
the Americans. 

Dickson was one of the leading fur-traders in the 
employ of the Northwest Company. He had had 
headquarters at Prairie du Chien for several years 
past and engaged in operations extending to the 
sources of the Mississippi and far up the Minnesota. 
During the war, Dickson held local rank as a lieu- 
tenant-colonel in the British service and rendered 
as effective service as was possible, in keeping 
Wisconsin Indians in line with the interests of his 
government. It was while upon this service that he 
and his Indian allies were caught at Garlic Island, 
in Lake Winnebago (December, 18 13), by an early 
freezing of those waters and obliged to camp there 
for the winter. From this camp, spies and runners 
were frequently dispatched to Milwaukee, Peoria 
and Prairie du Chien, and news of American move- 
ments, more or less distorted by savage vision, was 
sent on by Dickson to his correspondents in Green 
Bay and Mackinaw. In these letters, scores of 
which are before me as I write, the trader gave a 
spicy account of his troubles with the Indians, who, 
after their usual fashion, played fast and loose and 



138 ENGLISH BOM/NAiyON CONTINUED. 

had to be bribed afresh every few days, with no 
certainty but what they were equally pledged to the 
agents of the enemy. Provisions were soon ex- 
hausted and the Green Bay traders, while nearly all 
of them salaried servants of the king, were exacting 
in their terms for recompense. No sooner had 
fresh goods arrived up the ice-bound Fox, than 
starving Indians came swarming to Garlic Island 
from forty miles around, like flocks of vultures, and 
ate poor Dickson out of house and home. Again 
and again had the Green Bay forwarders to be 
drawn upon, each time with increased difficulty 
and enhanced prices, the enraged Dickson mean- 
while pelting his tormentors with opprobrious epi- 
thets and threatening to call upon them the king's 
wrathful hand. It was the middle of April before 
the partisan could reach the Fox-Wisconsin portage 
and enter upon the slow and painful task of collect- 
ing Indians at that old-time rendezvous, for the 
proposed military expedition against Fort Shelby. 

Meanwhile, Captain James Pullman, of the Brit- 
ish army, and his local lieutenants, John Lawe and 
Louis Grignon, were busy in organizing a militia 
company among the Green Bay habitans. At 
Prairie du Chien, the American Indian agent, 
Nicholas Boilvin,and a French trader in the Ameri- 
can interest, named Jacrot, addressed what Dick- 
son calls "two flaming Epistles to the people of 



ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 139 

the prairie — exhorting them to claim the protec- 
tion of the great republic before it is too late & 
a great deal of other stuff." Brisbois and Rolette, 
however, the leading traders at the prairie, were 
stanch in their adhesion to the British, and the 
latter spent the winter at Mackinaw drilling his 
engages and preparing to assist in wresting his 
home settlement from the intrusive Americans. 

War parties relying for their strength upon the 
alliance of Indians, always move slowly. It was 
the twenty-eighth of June before Colonel Robert 
McDouall, then commandant at Mackinaw, could 
get the expedition started from the island. Major 
William McKay, temporarily given the rank of lieu- 
tenant-colonel, headed the party, which consisted 
of about one hundred and thirty-six Sioux and 
Winnebagoes ; some seventy-five French-Canadian 
engages, under their bourgeois, Joseph Rolette and 
Thomas G. Anderson, who were given the local 
rank of captain ; and about twenty regulars of the 
Michigan Fencibles under Pullman. The warriors 
reached Green Bay, in their birch-bark canoes, six 
days later, and there were promptly joined by Louis 
Grignon, a valiant Creole trader wearing the gay 
scarlet coat and golden epaulettes of a captain of 
volunteers,* and having in his company thirty of 
the habitans of Green Bay, mostly his own engages 

* This coat can still be seen in the museum of the Wisconsin Historical Society. 



I40 ENGLISH DOMINATION CONIINUED. 

— classed in the reports as "almost all old men 
unfit for service." 

After a good deal of feasting, speech-making and 
present-giving, the Indians of the Green Bay dis- 
trict were worked up into a sufificient degree of en- 
thusiasm,, and with another hundred dusky recruits 
the expedition was enabled to resume its progress. 
Never did the mirrored surface of the Fox reflect a 
more singular spectacle. The enemy was far away, 
and none of the customary safeguards of scouting 
parties were essential ; yet there was a certain 
regularity in the formation of the flotilla, for the 
savage mind delights in ceremonial, and McKay 
was instructed to fully imbue his forest allies with 
a sense of the magnitude and importance of the 
undertakins:. A few canoe-loads of French woods- 
men, dressed for the most part in whitened buck- 
skin and gay with red mob-caps and fringed sashes, 
led the van, polished rifles gleaming above their 
baggage packs. Then followed a bateau with 
ofUcers and the royal colors, in the bow of which 
was planted a three-pound cannon, in charge of a 
bombardier of the Royal Artillery,* an outfit de- 
signed to impress the Indians with a sense of awe. 
Next came stra2:Q:linQ: alonof the canoes of the 



» In his official report of tlie outfit, Colonel McDouall says: " I agreed to let them [the 
Indian chiefs] have the three-poiinder I brought from York, chiefly from the novelty of the 
thins among the Indians, & the effi-ct it will have in aiigmcntini; their numbers, I attached to 
it a I'ombardier of the Royal Artill ry." 



ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 



141 



natives, each band with its war chiefs, followed 
by the weather-beaten engages and miscellaneous 
habitans from Mackinaw and Green Bay, the pro- 
cession closing with the Michigan Fencibles guard- 
the commissary's bateaux. The fair valley — now 
skirted with bluffs, now spreading far and wide. 




the flood oft overhung with gloomy pines and 
again hedged by great, undulating walls of reeds 
— rano- with the wild notes of Canadian boatinq- 
songs, keeping time to the strokes of gleaming 
paddles. The soldiers, to the rear, often broke 
forth with martial airs, and for the first time these 



142 ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 

Wisconsin hills echoed the swelling notes of " The 
British Grenadier/' "God save the King!" and 
" Britannia's the Queen of the Ocean." The 
rude war-songs of the painted savages frequently 
woke the forest calm. At night, around the 
camp fires, under the trees, upon the river bank, 
there was gay revelry indeed, with the shouts, the 
songs, the gay laughter, and the scraping of the 
little French fiddles in the white quarter; while 
around their own council fires the red men rent the 
air with discordant yelps as they leaped and plunged 
and fiercely gestured in the demoniac war dance, 
keeping time to the monotonous boom of the 
Indian drum. With the smart caps and sashes 
and fringed coats of the woodsmen, the crude blue 
and yellow and red of the Mackinaw-suited habitans, 
the red and blue and shining brass of the Fencibles, 
and the many-hued blankets of the befeathered 
and ochre-daubed aborigines, this human mosaic 
slowly proceeded through the glistening flood, 
hoping to capture and hold Wisconsin for His 
Britannic Majesty. 

At the portage, Dickson met the expedition with 
enough Sioux, Winnebagoes, Menomonees and 
Chippewas to make up the allied forces to six hun- 
dred and fifty — of whom all but one hundred and 
twenty were Indians, who, as McKay reports, 
" proved to be perfectly useless." Perhaps the 



ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 1 43 

only advantage of having them on the roll, was the 
fact that had their nominal assistance not been 
engaged they might have sadly harassed the whites 
while threading the Fox-Wisconsin water-way. 

It was noon of July 17 when McKay's motley 
crew came gliding through the delta of the Wis- 
consin and landed on a sandy bank abutting .the 
waters of the Mississippi. The commander found 
that the land-force of the Americans, numbering 
sixty or seventy effective men and being protected 
by six pieces of cannon, was for the most part en- 
sconced behind the little stockade, in addition to 
which were two block-houses regarded as perfectly 
safe against Indians. In the river lay the Governor 
Clark, with her fourteen cannon and a force some- 
what larger than the garrison. The outlook was 
not at first promising for the British commander, 
but he made bold within half an hour of his 
arrival to summon Perkins to " surrender uncondi- 
tionally, otherwise to defend yourself to the last 
man." Without delay, Perkins curtly replied : 

" Sir, — I received your polite note and prefer 
the latter, and am determined to defend to the last 
man." 

It was not the intention of McKay to begin his 
attack until the next morning at daylight, but the 
Indians were clamorous to see the three-pounder 
at work, and in order to amuse them the arm was 



144 ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 

brought to bear upon the gunboat. In the course 
of three hours two thirds of the eighty-six shot 
fired, penetrated the Governor Clark, which replied 
with vigor, the garrison in the rear meanwhile 
pouring upon the British hot volleys of musketry. 
As for the Indians, they mainly employed them- 
selves in plundering the houses of the inhabitants 
and keeping up a distant and ineffectual fire upon 
the fort. Finally, the gunboat, finding her position 
too warm, slipped her cable and, running in behind 
an island, made her escape down stream. McKay 
sent a party of Sacs, in canoes, to hang upon the 
wake of the retreating vessel, annoy the crew in 
every possible way, and prevent them from debark- 
ing to get firewood. A party of Frenchmen were 
dispatched the following morning who followed the 
Clark as far as the rapids at Rock Island ; but 
another fortified keel-boat from down stream put in 
an appearance here, and the Creoles were frightened 
off. A day or two later there were six American 
gunboats of the Clark pattern, at the rapids; one 
of them was boarded by the Sac party, and many 
Americans tomahawked, the boat being finally 
destroyed by fire ; thereupon the others, fearing 
the presence of a large force of the enemy, dropped 
down the river and left the British free to complete 
their work at Prairie du Chien. 

Meanwhile, McKay turned his attention to the 



ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 1 45 

fort, A good deal of ammunition was spent, and 
the English supply soon became short. At six in 
the evening of the nineteenth there were left but 
six rounds for the three-pounder; and from the 
foremost of two breastworks reared by his men, 
McKay was preparing to throw into the fort all six, 
red-hot, with the hope of setting it on fire. At 
this moment a white flag was put out, and soon an 
American officer came down to the English camp 
bearing Perkins's offer to surrender, provided the 
Indians were pledged not to ill-treat the officers 
and men. McKay was a humane man, and prom- 
ised to keep the Indians quiet, as well as to allow 
the garrison to march out at eight o'clock the fol- 
lowing morning, with the honors of war. During 
the night he placed a strong guard in the fort and 
took possession of the artillery. The stipulations 
made by McKay were faithfully carried out, in spite 
of the irritation of the savages, who were eager 
for scalps ; he confesses that his powers of resist- 
ance were sorely tried, and nothing but supplica- 
tions, threats and vigilance prevented a massacre. 
The Indians were obliged to be content with sack- 
ing the town and destroying the growing crops. 

In this engagement, the Americans, reports 
McKay, had five killed and ten wounded on board 
the orunboat, and three wounded in the fort. The 
allies do not appear to have suffered any casualties. 



146 ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 

A large stock of ammunition, provisions and arma- 
ments fell into the hands of the captors, by reason 
of the surrender. The prisoners they were not en- 
abled to keep. Soon after the capture Perkins 
and his men were given back their arms and sent 
down the river to St. Louis. 

It had been the purpose of McKay, after reduc- 
ing Fort Shelby, to drop down the Mississippi to 
the mouth of the Illinois, a:nd, ascending that 
stream, to lay siege to the American fort at Peoria. 
But the reports brought to him by his Indian spies, 
of the size of the American force along the Mis- 
sissippi below Rock Island, induced him to forego 
so hazardous a project. On the other hand, the 
Americans appear to have received an exaggerated 
report of the strength of the English-invading 
party at the mouth ot the Wisconsin, and failed to 
make an attempt to displace it. That McKay did 
not consider his position tenable, is evident from 
his report to McDouall, made the twenty-seventh 
of July, in which he says of the outlook : " My de- 
cided opinion is that from this to the fall an attack 
may undoubtedly be looked for from below, and if 
four or five of these floating block-houses come up 
armed, as the Governor Clark was, our present 
force is certainly not equal to prevent their repul- 
sing us unless more particularly favored by Provi- 
dence than before." 



ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. 147 

When the English flag was run to the head of 
the staff in Fort Shelby, the name of the establish- 
ment was changed to Fort McKay. As for McKay 
himself, he remained until the tenth of August, 
when he left, with some of the Indians, regulars 
and fur-trade volunteers, for Mackinaw, and after- 
wards took part in military operations along the 
lower lakes. The trader Anderson was left in 
charge of the fort, but he was afterwards relieved 
by Capt. A. Bulger, a regular officer. The winter 
was spent in councils with and presentations to the 
neighboring savages, who adopted this diplomatic 
method of preying upon the British stores. 

The welcome news of the treaty of peace between 
the United States and England, signed at Ghent 
the twenty-fourth of December, 18 14, reached Wash- 
ington in February, 181 5. But it was the twenty- 
second of May before Captain Bulger received 
official intelligence of the event. He promptly 
wrote to Governor Clark at St. Louis, on the 
twenty-third, signifying his acceptance of the situa- 
tion. Clark had desired him to await the arrival 
of a detachment from St. Louis, and to turn over 
the property to the new occupants of the fort, 
but Bulger informed his correspondent that the 
presence of "detachments of British and United 
States troops, at the same time, at Fort McKay, 
would be the means of embroiling either one party 



148 ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED, 

or the other, in a fresh rupture with the Indians." 
The fact was, that Bulger knew enough of the 
character of his Indian allies, to fear that if 
they saw the American troops coolly turn the 
British out of the stockade, without any struggle 
on the part of the latter, his party would be con- 
temptuously dubbed by the redskins a parcel of 
"old women," whom it would be fair play to hence- 
forth plunder and maltreat. Bulger therefore 
quietly hauled down his flag on the twenty-fourth 
of May and beat a hasty though dignified retreat 
to Mackinaw. There, he turned over to the United 
States commandant whatever of captured arms 
and stores remained, and speedily betook himself 
to Canada. 

And thus closed the long period of British domi- 
nation over Wisconsin, which was now for the first 
time American soil in fact. 



CHAPTER VI. 



WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 




T was with marked re- 
luctance that Eng- 
land parted with the 
Northwest. In 1783, 
we find her grudg- 
ingly agreeing to the 
Great Lakes as an 
international boun- 
dary, and then openly 
holding the country 
for thirteen years longer, upon a flimsy pretext. 
We see that she still kept her grip upon the region, 
through the agency of the fur traders, and was 
practically its master at the opening of the second 
war with the United States. Durinfj that war, she 
made desperate attempts to plant her flag at the 
old vantage points, and actually held the important 
Fox-Wisconsin gateway to the Mississippi until 
the close of the struQ:o^le. At the convention of 
Ghent, her commissioners labored hard to have the 

greater part of the Northwest, including the whole 

149 



150 IVISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

of Wisconsin, declared Indian territory under her 
protection ; but the attempt failed. 

The United States had, since 1803, a justice of 
the peace at Green Bay, in the person of Charles 
Reaume. He was an easy-tempered and jovial old 
Frenchman, who had been originally appointed to 
the position by Governor Harrison of Indiana 
Territory, and who held over when Wisconsin 
became attached to the new Territory of Illinois, 
in 1809. But Reaume's rude court recognized no 
known statutes of the United States, being con- 
ducted upon such principles of common justice 
as commended themselves to the astute mind of 
Reaume himself, who was much of a philosopher 
in his way, and understood well the importance 
of having an eye to the main chance. And so 
Reaume continued through all these years of strug- 
ole and change, drafting antenuptial agreements, 
marrying and divorcing, registering births and 
deaths, certifying indifferently to either American 
or British commissions, drawing up contracts for 
traders' clerks and engages, issuing baptismal cer- 
tificates, and what not, either in wretched French 
or in abominable English as the case might be — 
general scribe and notary for the whole country 
round: a picturesque and important functionary. 

Many queer stories are told of Judge Reaume. 
He was a baldheaded, pompous old Frenchman, and 



WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 15 I 

wore on all public occasions a scarlet frock-coat, 
faced with white silk and gay with spangled but- 
tons, which can be seen to this day in the State 
Historical Society's museum at Madison. Instead 
of issuing a summons, he would often instruct the 
constable to exhibit his Honor's well-known lar^e 
jack-knife to the desired witness or culprit, and 
this was regarded by all as sufficient evidence of 
judicial authority. A bottle of whiskey was the 
strongest argument, it was said, that could be 
offered to the court. On more than one occasion 
he ordered the losing party to work for a certain 
number of days upon the Reaume farm, and often 
the unoffending constable was sentenced to pay 
the costs of the suit. 

At first, the French and half-breeds at Green 
Bay and Prairie du Chien, at Milwaukee and Port- 
age and La Pointe, did not relish Yankee interfer- 
ence in their beloved Wisconsin. They had gotten 
along very nicely with the English, who fostered 
the fur trade and emplo3^ed the French with liber- 
ality. Then too, among the habitaiis, the reputation 
of these Americans was not the best. They were 
known to be a busy, bustling, driving people, quite 
out of tune with the devil-may-care methods of the 
Creoles, and were, moreover, an agricultural race 
that was fast narrowing the limits of the hunting 
grounds. The Wisconsin Frenchmen felt that 



152 WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

their interests in this respect were identical with 
those of the savages, hence we find in the corre- 
spondence of the times* a very bitter tone adopted 
towards the new-comers, who were regarded as 
intruders and covetous disturbers of existing com- 
mercial and social relations. 

As it was found that the English fur traders 
were still slyly stirring up strife on the part of the 
Indians and French, Congress enacted in 1S16 that 
thereafter no foreign traders should operate in 
United States territory. It was hoped by this act 
to put a stop to British interference in the North- 
west, but the law was openly evaded. The fur 
trade could not be conducted without French- 
Canadian interpreters and voyagcurs, and the 
statute was so construed as to admit these. The 
Creoles ostensibly set up for themselves in the 
forest trade, with large stocks of goods, but behind 
each French or half-breed trader, and many an 
alleged American proprietor as well, was an Eng- 
lish supply firm who merely used him as an agent. 

This same year Astor established the American 
Fur Company, with headquarters at Mackinaw 
Island, and was given a substantial monopoly of 
the Indian commerce; but it was long before he 
could overcome this species of British competition. 



* Hundreds of letters written by Wisconsin fur-trade agents and dcrks at tliis time, are 
in the possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society. 



WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 153 

The General Government- also tried its hand 
in the business of supplying the Northwestern 
Indians with the products of civilization, hoping 
that through trading posts established at the sev- 
eral frontier forts, goods could be furnished at low 
cost, the confidence of the natives secured, and the 
Englishmen beaten out of the field. 

In June, 18 16, four companies of riflemen from St. 
Louis, under Major Morgan, occupied Prairie du 
Chien and erected on the site of Fort McKay a 
hollow square of block-houses, which they dubbed 
Fort Crawford, in honor of William H, Crawford, 
then secretary of the treasury. One bright, still 
day, the following month, much to the disgust of the 
habitajis of Green Bay, three schooners loaded with 
troops slowly sailed into Fox River and debarked 
their uniformed passengers upon the strand. 

For the first time in the history of Wisconsin, 
the American flag fluttered over the Green Bay 
settlement, and when the drums beat the reveille, 
and the bugle sounded taps that night, the Creoles 
sought their beds in sorrow, for the dreaded 
Yankee tyrants, who had been painted to them 
by the British in colors black indeed, had un- 
doubtedly come to stay. The new arrivals were of 
the Third regiment of infantry, under Colonel John 
Miller. In two months' time they had reared for 
themselves upon the low western bank of the river 



154 U'JSCOASJN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

stockaded barracks, and styled them Fort Howard, 
as a tribute to General Benjamin Howard, builder 
of Fort Clark, at Peoria, during the war just 
ended. 

We have seen that in Forts Howard and Craw- 
ford, there were established Government trading; 
posts ; but these failed of their purpose, for official 
factors were unable to give credit, and without 
credit the Indian hunters could not exist. The 
savages were improvident, and spent what they 
saved as quickly as they received their pay, hence 
when the hunting season opened they were invari- 
ably without provisions, clothing or ammunition for 
the winter, and no trader could hope to gain their 
patronage who would not trust them with a liberal 
hand ; * the prices charged for goods were but a 
secondary consideration with them. The Govern- 
ment was of course outbid on such terms as these, 
by the private traders, whose agents were scattered 
throughout the Indian villages, and on easy terms 
with their inhabitants. Then again, the Indian 
felt something akin to contempt for a political 
master who would descend to keeping a trading 
shop, and haggling over the prices of peltries and 
cottons. The fort traders were in time driven 



* Ordinarily, the Indian hunters were trusted by the traders with forty or fifty doUars in 
goods, cost price, at the opening of the winter. Exceptionally expert hunters were given wider 
latitude, some of them fretting as high as $300 worth. The traders expected one hundred per 
cent, profit, and thought ihey uxrc doing well if they collected one half of their credits. 



WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 155 

from the market, and this plan of courting native 
favor was abandoned as impracticable. 

It will be interesting to pause for a while and 
note the extent and character of the Indian trade 
in Wisconsin at the time. We have seen that up to 
the close of the War of 18 12-15, ^^^^ French trader, 
whether under the political domination of France 
or of England, was in full possession of this impor- 
tant field of commerce. But with Astor, there 
were gradually introduced improved methods, and 
in a few years the American Fur Company had 
obtained a strong hold upon the country, although 
the great corporation could never rid itself of the 
necessity of employing the Creole and mixed-blood 
voyageurs, engages and interpreters, and was obliged 
to shape its poHcy so as to accommodate these 
easy-going subordinates. 

The goods used in the trade were chiefly coarse 
cloths — scarlet, blue, white, green and yellow 
strouds — blankets, cheap jewelry, wampum beads, 
vermilion paint, myriad-hued shawls, handker- 
chiefs, ribbons and garterings, sleigh-bells, jew's- 
harps, hand looking-glasses, combs, scalping-knives, 
scissors, kettles, hoes, gunpowder, shot, tobacco 
and whisky ; traffic in the last-named article was 
forbidden, but it was impossible to prevent the in- 
troduction of a commodity which yielded immense 
profits to the trader, and was eagerly demanded by 



156 JVJSCONS/N BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

tlie Indians. These goods, upon arrival at Macki- 
naw, were sent out by canoes and bateaux to tlie 
different posts, where they were either dealt out to 
the savages direct or dispatched to the winter 
camps along the far-reaching waterways. 

Returning home in the spring, the bucks would 
set their squaws and children at making maple- 
sugar or planting corn, water-melons, potatoes and 
squash, while they themselves either dawdled their 
time away or hunted for summer furs. In the autumn, 
the wild rice was garnered along the sloughs. and 
the river mouths, and the straggling field crops were 
gathered in — some of the product being hidden in 
skillfully-covered pits, as a reserve, and some dried 
for transportation in the winter's campaign. The 
villagers were now ready to depart for their hunt- 
ing grounds, often hundreds of miles away. It was 
then that the trader came and credits were wrangled 
over and extended, each side endeavoring to drive 
a sharp bargain, but with the chances generally 
in favor of the commercial adventurer. 

It must be admitted that the individual trader 
never became wealthy. His immediate gains often 
seemed large, but the credit system grew in extent 
until at last the risk was enormous — for the Indian 
soon ceased to be good pay, the romancers to the 
contrary notwithstanding — and the monopolizing 
American Fur Company managed to absorb by 



IV/SCOiVSJN BECOMES AMERICAN/ZED. 1 57 

far the greater part of the profits won by its 
subordinates. 

The fur trade in Wisconsin, under Astor, was in 
its heyday about the year 1820. At Green Bay 
there were then sixty houses and some five hun- 
dred people, in addition to the garrison. A crude 
sort of agriculture was practiced, but the people 
were mainly employes of the dozen resident traders. 
Of these latter, an English Jew, named John 
Lawe, was the heaviest operator, and represented 
Astor's company. Lawe's customers were the 
Menomonees, and his posts were at the Indian 
villages along the Menomonee, Peshtigo, Oconto 
and other rivers flowing into Green Bay, while he 
also had stations on the Upper Wolf. There were 
about four hundred Menomonee hunters, and they 
covered the region extending northward to the 
Chippewa country, west to Black River, and south- 
ward along the shore of Lake Michigan to 
Milwaukee River. 

Milwaukee was an entrepot for the Pottawa- 
tomie trade. It was still a polyglot village and on 
the northern boundary of the Pottawatomie claim. 
These people numbered some two hundred hunters, 
in Wisconsin. 

At the Grand Kakalin, the site of the present 
city of Kaukauna, Augustin Grignon had a sub- 
stantial log-trading shanty, the shell of which can 



15^ WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

still be seen by the traveler along the portage 
path around the great falls of the Lower Fox. His 
trade was among the Menomonees, but other mem- 
bers of the Grignon family were up the Wisconsin 
River with the Winnebagoes. The Porlier and 
Grignon families were united at Butte des Morts, 
a Menomonee station, and at the Fox-Wisconsin 
portage, in the heart of the Winnebago country. 
The Winnebagoes hunted around Lake Winnebago, 
up the Fox River to its source, on the Wisconsin 
to the neighborhood of Stevens Point, on the head- 
waters of the Rock River — including Lake Kosh- 
konong and the Madison Lake region — and on to 
the northwest as far as Black River, where they 
often overlapped the Menomonee grounds. There 
were also a few Winnebagoes along the shore of 
the Mississippi River, above the mouth of the 
Wisconsin. 

Prairie du Chien was a shabby French settle- 
ment of perhaps eighty buildings, including the 
fort, a population of five hundred and a garrison 
of one hundred. The people, having largely come 
from the Illinois and St. Louis settlements below, 
were less mixed with Indian blood than their com- 
patriots at Green Bay. Joseph Rolette was the 
chief trader, and officiated as agent for the Amer- 
ican Fur Company, his operations extending from 
Dubuque, Iowa, up the Mississippi River to the 



WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. I 59 

Falls of St. Anthony, and up the St. Peter's to its 
source ; he was also engaged on the Lower Wis- 
consin and Upper Rock. His principal patrons 
were the Sioux, who were located on the west bank 
of the Mississippi River, and claimed territory in 
Wisconsin as far as the falls of the Black, Chip- 
pewa, Red Cedar and St. Croix Rivers. 

The Chippewas, at this period, occupied the 
northern third of Wisconsin, their hunters num- 
bering six hundred. The territory which they 
ranged over was reached from Lake Superior by 
four rivers — the Ontanagon, Montreal, Bad and 
Bois Brule ; and from the headwaters of these there 
were frequent and easy portages to the streams 
flowing southward into Lake Michigan and the 
Mississippi. Aside from the distributing station 
at La Pointe, described in the preceding chapter, 
the American Fur Company's chief post in the 
Chippewa country was on the shores of Lac du 
Flambeau, with auxiliary posts at Lac Chetac, 
Rice Lake, Tomahawk Lake, Lac Court Oreilles, 
Namekagon Lake and other favorite points of 
forest rendezvous. 

The Indian trade continued to be the chief com- 
mercial interest in Wisconsin until about 1834, 
when new interests had arisen, with the develop- 
ment of the lead mines in the southwest, and the 
advent of agricultural settlers upon the close of 



i6o WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

the Black Hawk War. It is important to note, how- 
ever, that " the fur trade became the pathfinder for 
asi'i cultural and manufacturins^ civilization." * The 
traders were wont to select commanding sites, often 
Indian villages, for their stations; and upon sites 
thus chosen, either by the aborigine or trader, are 
to-day situated most of the cities and leading towns 
of the State — such, for example, as Milwaukee, 
Oshkosh, F'ond du Lac, La Crosse, Eau Claire, 
Chippewa Falls, Madison, Sheboygan, Manitowoc, 
Two Rivers, Kewaunee, Green Bay, Prairie du 
Chien, Depere, Kaukauna, Neenah, Hudson, Por- 
tage, Menomonee, Oconto, Peshtigo, Black River 
Falls, Rice Lake, Baraboo, Shullsburg. As many 
of the trading posts were on portages, where 
Indians were obliged to carry their craft around 
falls or rapids, the future water-powers of the State 
soon became familiar to the early whites ; while 
across such portage plains as those at Portage and 
Sturgeon Bay, important ship canals were after- 
wards excavated. The network of Indian trails, 
which were also used by the traders, developed 
into public roads when American settlers, first with 
saddle horses and then with wagon teams, came 
to occupy the country. Thus was Wisconsin 



* "The Fur Trade in Wisconsin," by Prof. F. J. Turner, being the annual address de- 
Tivered before the Wisconsin Historical Society, January 3, 18S9. It is a clear, exhaustive 
analysis of the character and influence of the trade, and of the utmost importance to writers 
on this phase of the history of Wisconsin, 



WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. i6l 

thoroughly explored, its cities and highways 
located, and its waterways mapped out, by the early 
French, long before the inrush of agricultural 
colonists. 

It was quite early in the present century when 
the rich lead mines of Dubuque, Galena and 
Southwestern Wisconsin attracted the attention of 
the nation and a movement began which hastened 
the Anglo-Saxon settlement of that region and the 
downfall of the fur trader. The existence of the 
metal had been known to the Indians long before the 
first French explorers appeared on the scene, but it 
was not until the whites introduced fire-arms and 
the slaughter of animals for the fur trade began, 
that the savages understood its value. Instructed 
by the early French, they learned to rudely mine 
and smelt the ore, and, with the increased demand, 
the working of the open shafts became a regular 
and profitable industry with the Sacs and Foxes, 
who were jealous of the intrusion of whites in 
their mining district, except for the purposes of 
trade. Upon the west side of the Mississippi, and 
in the lower Galena region, privileged French and 
Spanish miners, especially friendly to the Indians, 
were established long before the opening of the 
Revolutionary War, and St. Louis became a con- 
siderable market for the commodity. 

In 1804, ^s we have seen, the lead region was 



1 62 tVlSCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

acquired by purchase, by tbe United States, and 
the Sac and Fox owners for the most part moved 
out. They were succeeded in Southwestern Wis- 
consin by the gypsy Winnebagoes, who squatted 
on the land and for a long time kept whites out of 
the country, the half-breeds disposing of the pro- 
duct of the mines in St. Louis, whither it was sent 
in canoes. But gradually miners from Missouri 
and Kentucky — some of the latter bringing negro 
slaves with them — moved into the country and 
kept the Indians and their intriguing Canadian 
relatives in check. It was in 1822 that the general 
o;overnment took charo^e of the lead mines and 
began granting leases to the operators, which sys- 
tem was maintained until 1847, when the lands 
were brousfht into the market and sold. 

In July, 1826, there were but one hundred 
whites at work in the Galena and Wisconsin 
diggings ; the following March there were only 
two hundred, but by the close of the succeeding 
twelve months the number had leaped to four 
hundred and six. The heaviest immigration set 
in, in 1829. The new town of Galena was 
the entrepot of the region, and it soon had a 
floating population of many thousands. The 
rough scenes familiar to the Rocky Mountain 
mining camps of a later period were, at this early 
time, to be daily witnessed in the shanty metropolis 



IVJ^CONS/N BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 163 

of the lead region. Speculation ran high ; gam- 
bling was one of the most prevalent vices; the old 
Indian trails from Central Illinois were transformed 
into highways for Concord coaches and lumber- 
wagon expresses ; men poured into the district on 
foot and on horseback, by river-boat or by team, 
from all sections of the East and West; in a 
few months prospectors were picking holes all over 
the rousfh hills of Southwestern Wisconsin, and 
soon log shanties and stockades were familiar ob- 
jects in the landscape. Men worth their thousands 
bivouacked in the foot-road alongside of tramps and 
vagabonds of every grade ; and a traveler of that 
day tells us that little knots of desperate, ragged 
fellows, armed to the teeth and playing poker on 
the stumps by the wayside, were to be met with 
every mile or so upon the journey. 

The Indians could not withstand this army of 
occupation. The newcomers had come to stay at 
any hazard, and were prepared to fight like tigers 
for their claims. Mushroom towns sprang up 
all over the district; deep-worn native paths be- 
came ore roads between the burrows and the river 
landings; sink-holes abandoned by the Sacs and 
Foxes when no longer to be operated with their 
crude tools, were re-opened and found to be excep- 
tionally rich, while new diggings and smelting fur- 
naces, fitted out with modern appliances, fairly 



164 WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

dotted the map of the country. A new era had 
opened in Wisconsin. The days of the fur trade 
were numbered. The miner held the region. 

A treaty between the United States and the In- 
dians of IlHnois, Wisconsin and Minnesota had 
been concluded at Prairie du Chien in August, 
1825, at which the general government was repre- 
sented by William Clark and Lewis Cass, the 
former then serving as superintendent of Indian 
affairs at St. Louis, and the latter as governor of 
Michigan Territory, of which Wisconsin was at 
the time a part. Articles which were signed at this 
council prescribed tribal boundaries and provided 
for a general peace among the bands, many of 
which had long been pitted against each other ; 
nevertheless the Indians went home dissatisfied, 
and the peaceful ends sought to be accomplished 
were not only not secured, but to inter-tribal hatred 
was added an intensified dislike of the Americans. 
The latter were adjudged parsimonious, because 
they failed to load the chiefs with presents, after 
the fashion of the British on such occasions ; the 
land-grabbing tendencies of the Great Father at 
Washington were too plainly indicated at this, as 
at all of the treaty councils ; and the natives did 
not enjoy the unsympathetic formality of the com- 
missioners, who refused to allow the new treaty to 
be ratified by a savage carousal. 




INDIANS ATTACKING A STOCKADE. 



WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 167 

After a winter signalized by several scalping 
raids between the Chippewas of Wisconsin and the 
Sioux west of the Mississippi, the Winnebagoes 
and Sioux began in the spring of 1826 to act in a 
sullen manner toward the whites in their territory. 
This unruly conduct was the immediate result of 
rumors which had been freely circulated in the 
Northwest woods by malicious Frenchmen, to the 
effect that another war was imminent between 
the United States and England. Early in the sea- 
son, two Winnebagoes had been imprisoned at 
Fort Crawford for dishonest practices, a proceeding 
which increased the irritation. The summer was 
filled with alarms and in the fall there were rumors 
that the fort was to be attacked. It was in the 
midst of these troubles that all of a sudden there 
came an order from the war department at Wash- 
ington, ordering Fort Crawford to be abandoned 
and the troops withdrawn to Fort Snelling, far up 
the Mississippi River, near where St. Paul is now 
situated. The command was obeyed with alacrity, 
for it came as the result of the importunities of the 
officer in charge, Colonel Snelling, who had had 
personal difficulties with the people of Prairie du 
Chien. 

It may be well imagined that the Winnebagoes 
considered this untimely abandonment of the 
fort as the result of alarm upon the part of the 



1 68 n/SCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

whites, and an acknowledgment that the position 
was untenable in the event of an Indian uprising. 

The succeeding winter there were numerous for- 
est councils among the Winnebagoes in Western 
Wisconsin, at which the war spirit was strung to a 
high pitch among the younger men, who were fully 
resolved to take sides with the friendly British, 
should the promised contest break out. 

In March, 1827, some young Winnebagoes were 
hunting upon the Yellow River, in Iowa, twelve 
miles north of Prairie du Chien. They there came 
across the log cabin of a half-breed named Methode, 
a peaceable fellow from Prairie du Chien, who was 
making maple sugar, assisted by his wife and 
their five children. The entire family were killed, 
scalped and burned to cinders, by the marauding 
savages. 

The popular excitement at Prairie du Chien over 
this massacre of the Methodes, had hardly died 
away when a delegation of Sioux from across the 
Mississippi arrived in the village of Red Bird, a petty 
Winnebago chief whose town was on Black River, 
near the modern village of Trempealeau. These 
visitors brought word that the two Winnebago pris- 
oners who had been removed from Fort Crawford 
to Fort Snelling, when the troops were withdrawn, 
had been executed by the commandant. Red Bird 
believed the falsehood, and was quite ready to adopt 



WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 169 

the suggestion of the Sioux, — that vengeance be 
at once taken. The old Winnebago blood-code 
was, two lives for one, so the chief at once set 
out to take at least four white scalps in repri- 
sal, much to the delight of the trans- Mississippi 
delegates, who, having private enmities against the 
Americans, were using the deluded Red Bird as a 
cat's-paw. 

There were, however, abundant other grievances 
on the part of the Winnebagoes. The United 
States aofent at Prairie du Chien was not treating 
them in that hospitable spirit which they thought 
proper upon the part of the representative of a 
great nation, and stealthy British agents were still 
poisoning their minds with promises of better times 
to come; the whites were rapidly over-running their 
lead mines and driving them, often with some show 
of brutality, out of the region ; a hundred petty 
incidents tended to arouse native animosity, and 
the time was ripe for an uprising. 

Affairs were in this condition, when two keel- 
boats passed up the Mississippi from St. Louis, 
laden with provisions for Fort Snelling. Some of 
Red Bird's people boarded the craft and sold veni- 
son to the boatmen ; it was noticed by the Indians 
that the crews were practically unarmed, neverthe- 
less they did not venture to molest them. Twelve 
miles above, on the west side, the noted Sioux 



170 WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

chief, Wabashavv,* had a large village, occupying 
the site of the present city of Winona, Minnesota. 
Here the boats were again boarded. The Sioux 
visitors were surly, but upon being, sharply ordered 
ashore, left without ascertaining the defenseless 
condition of the boats. All along the west bank, 
to the fort, the Sioux showed marked ill-will, but 
the provisions finally arrived in safety at their 
destination. 

Failing to get scalps here, Red Bird, with his 
friend Wekau (the Sun) and two others, paddled 
down to Prairie du Chien, bent on finding victims 
there. It was the twenty-sixth of June, and many 
of the men of the settlement were away. It would 
have been easy for the savages to have openly ac- 
complished their ends, but the Indian nature de- 
Hghts in secret methods ; so, after bullying a few of 
the women, they set out for the farm of Registre 
Gagnier, two miles south of the village, at the foot 
of the prairie. This Gagnier was the son of a 
negro woman and a French voyagcur ; he had a 
white wife, two children, and a serving man named 
Lipcap. The poor farmer was an honest, hard- 
working fellow^ especially noted for his humane 
treatment of Indians, but this reputation stood him 
in little stead on such an occasion as this, when the 



* Son and successor of tlic Wnbashaw who served in the British-Tiidian exjiedition against 
St. Louis, in 1780, 



IVISCONSJN BECOMES AMERICAN/ZED. I 71 

merciless code of vengeance demanded blood, no 
matter who the victim. 

Red Bird had been his friend for years, so that 
when the four agents of death appeared at the door 
of the mulatto's cabin they were invited in, the 
kettle was slung over the open fire-place and pipes 
were produced. For hours did the visitors stay and 
enjoy the good man's hospitality, stealthily waiting 
their chance. At last Red Bird and Wekau sud- 
denly leveled their guns, and Gagnier and Lipcap 
fell dead at their feet. Madame Gao^nier seized 
her infant of eighteen months and flew to a window ; 
but Wekau was too quick for her ; the child was 
torn from her grasp, stabbed, scalped and dashed 
to the floor as dead. The woman herself snatched 
a gun, and when Wekau turned to attack her, pre- 
sented it to his breast. While he was recovering 
his self-possession she made off through the brush, 
in company with her little ten-year-old boy, and 
reached the village at the same time as the murder- 
ers. The alarm was given, but the Indians sud- 
denly disappeared. Later in the day the villagers 
visited the scene of the tragedy, buried Gagnier 
and Lipcap, and brought the mangled infant back 
to the settlement. Strange to say, the child sur- 
vived its brutal treatment and grew to womanhood. 

Red Bird and his companions had secured but 
three of the four scalps desired, though according to 



172 ir/SCONS/JV BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

Indian ethics their campaign had been well opened. 
It was in high glee that they skulked along the 
bush-grown shores of the Mississippi, and when 
out of sight of the village again took to their 
canoe, which they had hidden in a rocky cove. 
Thirty-seven warriors of Red Bird's village had 
meanwhile encamped at the mouth of the Bad Ax 
River, below the Black, and some forty miles north 
of Prairie du Chien, Here, upon the appearance 
of the murderers, a drunken debauch ensued in 
celebration of the event. To take a scalp, no 
matter with what exercise of treachery, is in 
itself deemed a deed of valor among American 
aborigines, and the acquisition of three made this 
thrice a victory. 

About four o'clock in the afternoon of the third 
day, while the Winnebago revelers were engaged 
in the scalp dance, the foremost of the two keel- 
boats before mentioned hove in sight on its return 
from Fort Snelling. Both boats had passed Wa- 
bashaw's village at Winona, unharmed, although 
the Sioux woke the echoes with war-whoops and ran 
along shore at the foot of the bluffs, fiercely gesticu- 
lating. When, therefore, the Winnebagoes at the 
Bad Ax showed fight, the crew of the leading craft 
were not alarmed, and in a spirit of bravado ran 
the boat towards shore. There were sixteen men 
on deck, handling the sweeps, and all were well 



IVISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 1 73 

armed, for their experience in going up stream had 
taught them the value of being prepared for mis- 
chief upon the return. 

When within thirty yards of the shore, the boat- 
men were greeted by the ear-piercing war-yelps of 
the Winnebagoes, and a shower of rifle balls swept 
the deck. The whites rushed below and shot 
through the portholes; a few venturesome Indians 
boarded the boat and ran her upon a sandbank, 
and for three hours a spasmodic fire was kept up 
on both sides. Dusk now setting in, five brave 
fellows in the crew jumped overboard in the midst 
of a hot bombardment from shore, and succeeded 
in pushing the boat off the bar. By dint of in- 
genious manipulation of the sweeps, from below, 
the well-riddled hulk was directed to the center of 
the river, and the swift current soon bore her from 
the sight of the disappointed savages, who had an- 
ticipated carrying the craft by assault, under cover 
of the night. The casualties among the besieged 
were slight, when the fact is considered that nearly 
seven hundred bullets had pierced the boat through 
and through; the loss was but two killed outright, 
and two mortally and two slightly wounded. Of 
the Indians, seven were killed and fourteen 
wounded. At midnight, the rear keel-boat passed 
the native camp, and was fired upon, but her crew 
returned the volley and were soon out of range. 



174 WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

Upon the arrival of the boats at Prairie du 
Chien, the news of the fierce engagement at the 
Bad Ax spread through the settlements. One 
hundred militiamen came up from Galena, and 
others poured in from the neighboring lead mines. 
The Winnebagoes were everywhere acting suspi- 
ciously, and the rumor spread that a general upris- 
ing was planned. Governor Cass proceeded from 
Detroit by the way of Green Bay, to the scene of the 
trouble and organized the defenses. The settlers 
strengthened the old fort at Prairie du Chien. A 
small battalion of troops finally came down from 
Fort Snelling, General Henry Atkinson hurried to 
the spot with a full regiment from Jefferson Bar- 
racks, near St. Louis, and early in August Major 
William Whistler, of Fort Howard, proceeded up 
the Fox with a portion of his command. 

Whistler tarried for a time at Butte des Morts, 
where a council was held with the Winnebagoes, 
Chippewas and Menomonees, regarding the lands 
to be accorded the New York Indians, of whom 
mention will be made later. At this council, which 
was concluded on the eleventh of August, the 
Winnebagoes were notified that the security of 
their people lay in the surrender of Red Bird and 
Wekau — it being tacitly understood that nothing 
further, in that event, would be done by the general 
eovernment about the attack on the keel -boats. 



IVISCONS/N BECOMES AMERICANJZED. 175 

Whistler arrived at the Fox-Wisconsin portage on 
the first of September, Atkinson and the regulars 
meanwhile slowly moving up the Wisconsin, with 
the intent of ultimately joining him. 

But the Winnebao^oes were still threatenino-. 
Consternation among the Wisconsin settlers was 
widespread, for an Indian war of serious pro- 
portions appeared to them imminent, and the lead 
mines soon lost half of their white population. 
Whistler fortified his camp and sent out runners 
among the disaffected warriors, advising them to 
deliver up the murderers or the tribe would be at 
once swept from the face of the earth. 

Upon the day after Whistler's arrival, an Indian 
emissary notified him that Red Bird and Wekau 
had decided to surrender themselves, in order to 
save the tribe, and would be at headquarters at 
three o'clock in the afternoon of the following day. 
Prompt to the hour the culprits appeared on the 
portage plain, attired in full savage paraphernalia, 
accompanied by a large party of unarmed friends, 
and singing their death songs. Wekau was a miser- 
able specimen of his tribe, but Red Bird was young, 
tall, well-proportioned, lofty in bearing and pictur- 
esquely clothed. He was received with military 
honors and throughout the impressive ceremony of 
surrender bore himself with a native majesty which 
won for him the admiration of the entire camp. 



176 WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERiCANIZED. 

It must be remembered that the young chief had 
not, in his bloody foray, violated the ethical code 
by which his people were governed. In the eyes 
of himself and his fellows, it was an heroic act. 
His surrender was in no sense the result of a prick- 
ing conscience, for from his standpoint he had 
acted as the avenger of his tribe. He gave him- 
self up and compelled the cowardly Wekau to also 
surrender, because this seemed the only method of 
saving the tribe from annihilation. It was a volun- 
tary performance on his part, and as such possessed 
the quality of heroism, for we should judge his 
motives solely from the point of view of his race, 
however false that position. He bore himself as a 
man of exquisite courage and dignity, for he felt 
that he freely offered himself as a tribal sacrifice. 
Red Bird had but one request, and that was, not to 
be placed in irons ; it was granted. Upon being 
taken to Prairie du Chien for imprisonment, he 
afterwards had frequent opportunities to escape ; 
but havinor criven his word to remain and be tried 
for his life, he never took advantage of them. A 
few months later he died in prison of an epidemic 
then raf^ino: in the settlement. 

Madame Gagnier was granted a pension by the 
government. As for the murderers of Methode 
they were tried, convicted and sentenced to death, 
but President Adams pardoned them on condition 



WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 177 

that the Winnebago tribe forever renounce its 
claims to the lead mines. This concession upon 
the part of the Indians was followed, in 1828, by 
the erection of Fort Winnebago, on the Fox-Wis- 
consin portage, and from that time forward the 
United States held a firm hand over the whole of 
Wisconsin. 

Allusion has been made to the removal to Wis- 
consin of certain bands of New York Indians. 
The diflficulties which these Eastern tribes experi- 
enced in their attempt to find homes beyond Lake 
Michigan, cannot be stated in these pages in detail, 
although the recitation would make an interesting 
story of political intrigue, personal ambition and 
corporate greed. A concern called the Holland 
Land Company had long held the preemption 
right, officially confirmed by the commonwealth, of 
purchasing from the Indians of Western New York 
the lands which they occupied, whenever the natives 
cared to dispose of them. In 18 10, the Ogden 
Land Company succeeded to this privilege. But 
acquirement of the Indian title was slow, under 
ordinary conditions, and the company began se- 
cretly to foster a spirit of discontent among the red 
men. Emigration schemes were advanced by cer- 
tain of the leaders, particularly the chiefs of the 
Stockbridge and Brothertown tribes, which had 
some generations before emigrated to New York 



178 WISCONS/iV BECOMES AMERICAAUZED. 

from New England, and the head men of the 
Oneidas and Munsees, who were to the manor 
born. The war department then having the Indians 
in charge, soon became interested in the movement, 
and sent out an agent in the summer of 1820, to 
visit the Northwestern tribes and ascertain if homes 
could be found among these for the New Yorkers. 
This agent, Dr. Jedediah Morse, of Connecticut, 
visited Green Bay and suggested the valley of the 
Lower Fox as an eligible place. While in Green 
Bay, he preached the first Protestant sermon ever 
heard there. 

There was among the Oneidas, at this time, 
an erratic quarter-breed, named Eleazer Williams, 
who had served as an American spy among the 
Canadian Indians during the War of 18 12-15, but 
who was now an Episcopalian missionary to the 
St. Reois band. He was a born intris^uer, and fell 
into this emiorration scheme with enthusiasm. His 
oriofinal aim was said to be the establishment of an 
Indian government in the Green Bay country, of 
which he should be dictator. Thereafter, we find 
him the most prominent character in the migra- 
tion of the New York Indians. 

The owners of the soil selected by Morse and 
now eagerly sought by W^illiams and his party, were 
the Menomonees and the Winnebagoes. A council 
was held at Green Bay in 182 1, at which Williams, 



ir/SCONS/N BECOMES AMERICANIZED. I 79 

by dint of great pertinacity, overcame the natural 
reluctance of the Wisconsin Indians and secured 
the grant for his people of a strip five miles in width, 
along the Lower Fox, for the most part east of the 
river. But this was not enouoh for the intriguer's 
purpose, so in 1822 another council was held. 

The Winnebagoes were obstinate and withdrew, 
but the Menomonees were finally wheedled into 
granting a most extraordinary concession : making 
the New Yorkers joint owners with themselves, of 
all Menomonee territory. But by the following 
year the Menomonees had repented of the bargain, 
and there followed ten years of confusion and 
wordy turmoil, during which Congress was fre- 
quently engaged in settling the dif^culties. At 
last, on the twenty-seventh of October, 1832, the 
affair was adjusted with at least a show of mutual 
satisfaction, and a considerable number of the New 
York Indians moved into Wisconsin — the Stock- 
bridges and Brothertowns settling to the east of 
Lake Winnebago, while the Oneidas and Munsees 
stationed themselves upon Duck Creek, near the 
mouth of the Lower Fox. 

As for Williams, baffled in his political purpose, 
and having won the contemptuous regard of both 
whites and Indians, he suddenly posed, in 1853, 
as Louis the Seventeenth, hereditary sovereign of 
France. It had always been supposed that soon 



l8o WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

after Louis the Sixteenth and his queen, Marie 
Antoinette, were beheaded, their imbecile son of 
eight years had died in the Temple Tower. But the 
claim was now made that the child had been ab- 
ducted and spirited off to America, and that 
Eleazer Williams, despite the well-known facts of 
his lineage, was the veritable dauphin. The claim 
was not only seriously discussed in the American 
press, but aroused attention even in France. One 
or two royalists came over to see the swarthy In- 
dian missionary at the Little Kakalin, whose face 
bore some resemblance to the Bourbon type of 
countenance, but left disappointed. Louis Phil- 
ippe sent him a present of some finely-bound books, 
believing him to be the innocent victim of a delu- 
sion. Williams died in 1858, keeping up his absurd 
pretensions to the last. 

The Black Hawk War, in 1832, was an epoch- 
making event. The opening of the lead mines 
was one great incentive to the rapid development 
of Territorial Wisconsin ; the Black Hawk insurrec- 
tion was the other. This uprising of the natives, 
so potent in its consequences, was the outgrowth 
of a protracted series of events, which can be but 
inadequately set forth in this limited space. It is 
perhaps sufficient for our purpose to say that when 
in 1804, certain of the Sac and Fox chiefs purport- 
ing to be representatives of their united tribes, 



WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. l8l 



sold their title in the lead mines to the general 
government, certain other head-men not present at 
the council, claimed that the sale was not author- 
ized. Among the opponents of the treaty was 
Black Hawk, a Sac leader, then twenty-seven years 
of age, who lived with his followers at the junction 
of the Rock River with the Mississippi, the site of 
the present city of Rock Island, Illinois. Black 
Hawk was a fine specimen of savage humanity. 
He was not a chief, he was but the leader by suffer- 
ance of a band of Sacs who were opposed to the 
constituted authorities. These malcontents were 
so friendly to the English marplots who had long 
tempted our Northwestern savages, that the party 
was always popularly known as" The British band," 
to distinguish it from the majority, which was gen- 
erally on friendly terms with the Americans. 

There was in the treaty of 1804 an unfortunate 
clause, to the effect that, " As long as the lands which 
are now ceded to the United States remain their [the 
general government's] property, the Indians belong- 
ing to the said tribes shall enjoy the privilege of liv- 
ing or hunting upon them." In other words, until 
the lands were preempted by actual settlers the 
Indians might remain upon them. All of the Sacs 
and Foxes except the British band at Rock Island 
removed at an early day to the west side of the 
Mississippi, but Black Hawk continued to hold his 



1 82 IV ISC ON SIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

villas:e on the east side. He was born there. The 
old-time Sac burying-ground was in the neighbor- 
hood; the soil was rich and the Hawk appears to 
have become attached, with all the sentimental 
ardor of an unusually patriotic nature, to this beau- 
tiful resting-place of his ancestors. He was, too, 
restless and ambitious, and not disposed to bend to 
the will of the tribal chiefs — Keokuk, Wapello, 
Morgan and the rest — and his followers were ever 
arrayed against them in council. He was a warm 
admirer of his British "father," and yearly his 
blanketed band would proceed by the old, deeply- 
worn Sac trail across Northern Illinois and Southern 
Michigan to the English Indian agency at Maiden, 
Canada, to return laden with gifts and flattery. He 
passionately hated the Americans because they an- 
noyed him, because marauders of our nationality 
had stolen his property, because he had once 
been beaten by one of them, because they were in- 
truders on the domains of his people, because his 
English father hated them, because his rivals were 
their friends. 

In 1823, although the line of settlement was still 
fifty or sixty miles to the east, the whites evinced a 
covetous desire for his fertile fields along the Mis- 
sissippi and began to squat there. The newcomers, 
year by year, robbed their Indian neighbors, de- 
stroyed their crops and burned their permanent 



IVJ SCONS IN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 183 

bark lodges every time the villagers were absent 
upon the chase. The tribal chiefs advised Black 
Hawk to leave and take up his lot with them across 
the river. But the obstinate patriot indignantly 
declined and proposed to stay at all hazards. Black 
Hawk, like Tecumseh, had a prophet friend and 
adviser — a shrewd, crafty fellow, half Winnebago 
and half Sac, chief of a village some thirty-five 
miles up the Rock, where Prophetstown, Illinois, 
now is. This rascally wizard cultivated the vanity 
of the Hawk and made him believe that the latter's 
power could not be overcome by the Americans, 
and that in due time the Pottawatomies of North- 
eastern Illinois and Southeastern Wisconsin, and 
the Winnebagoes of the Rock River valley and the 
lead mines, would come to his assistance. 

When the British band returned from their hunt 
in the spring of 1830, they found their town shat- 
tered, the cemetery plowed over and the whites 
more abundant than ever. Several squatters, who 
had illegally been upon the land for seven years 
and caused the Indians much trouble, had finally 
preempted the village site, the burial place and 
Black Hawk's favorite planting ground. This was 
a trick to accord with the letter, but to violate the 
spirit of the treaty of 1804, for a belt of practically 
unoccupied territory, forty miles wide, still lay to 
the eastward. The Indians, howlino" with ra2:e, at 



184 WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

once took the trail to Maiden, where they were 
liberally treated and encouraged to rise in arms 
against the acquisitive Americans. 

In the spring of 183 1, when the natives had 
returned to their old home after a gloomy and 
profitless winter's hunt, they were warned away 
by the whites. Black Hawk firmly declined to go 
and threatened the settlers with force if they did 
not themselves remove from his village. This was 
construed into a " bloody menace," and the Illinois 
militia were at once called out by a flaming execu- 
tive proclamation, to "repel the invasion of the 
British band." Sixteen hundred volunteers, with 
ten companies of United States troops, made a 
demonstration before Black Hawk's camp, the 
twenty-fifth of June, and during that night the 
unhappy savages paddled across the river, where 
they signed an agreement never to return to the 
east side without the express permission of the 
United States government. 

Unfortunately for them, they failed to keep this 
covenant. The intrigues of the British, aided by 
the mischievous prophet and by unauthorized over- 
tures from some of the Winnebago and Pottawat- 
omie hot-heads, resulted in Black Hawk casting 
prudence to the winds. His people had lost their 
chance of putting in a crop, and the succeeding 
winter's hunt proved a failure. Starvation stared 



WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 1S5 

them in the face, and a desperate sally was decided 
upon, in the vain hope that the United States 
would not dare to persist in driving them away 
from their beloved village. 

On the sixth of April, Black Hawk, with five 
hundred warriors, mostly Sacs, with all their 
women, children and domestic belongings, re- 
crossed the Mississippi and passed up the Rock 
to the prophet's town. Their intention was to 
there raise a crop of corn and, if practicable, to 
take the war-path in the fall. The news of the 
"invasion" spread like wildfire throughout the 
Illinois and Wisconsin settlements. The sfovernor 
of Illinois issued another fiery proclamation, sum- 
moning the people to arms, and the United States 
was called on to send an army to help quell the 
uprising. Some of the settlers fled from the 
country, others hastily threw up rude log forts, 
and everywhere was intense excitement and prepa- 
ration for bloody strife. 

In an incredibly short time three hundred regu- 
lar troops under General Atkinson, and sixteen 
hundred horse and two hundred foot volunteers, 
were on the march.* Black Hawk, after sending 
a defiant message to Atkinson, retreated up Rock 
River, making a stand at Stillman's Creek. Here 



* Abrahnm Lincoln was captain of an independent company of Illinois rangers, in this 
levy; Zachary Taylor was a colonel of regulars, and Jefferson Davis one of his lieutenants. 



l86 U-JSCONS/A BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

he would have surrendered, but on the fourteenth 
of May the drunken pickets of the advance party 
of whites killed his messengers of peace. Smart- 
ing for revenge, he turned and swiftly routed 
Stillman's two hundred and seventy-five horsemen, 
Vk'ith a mere handful of thirty-five braves to assist 
him. The cowardly rangers who fled at the first 
volley of the savages, without returning it, were 
haunted by the genius of fear, and, dashing madly 
through swamps and creeks, did not stop until 
they reached Dixon, twenty-five miles away ; while 
many kept on at a keen gallop till they reached 
their own firesides, fifty or more miles farther, 
carrying the absurd report that Black Hawk and 
two thousand blood-thirsty warriors were sweeping 
Northern Illinois with the besom of destruction. 

The war having now begun in earnest. Black 
Hawk, greatly encouraged and rich in supplies 
captured in Stillman's camp, felt impelled to carry 
it forward with vigor. Removing his women and 
children to the swampy fastnesses of Lake Kosh- 
konong, near the headwaters of the Rock River, 
in Wisconsin, he thence descended with his braves 
into Northern Illinois. The people flew like chick- 
ens to cover, on the warning of the Hawk's foray. 
There was consternation throughout the entire 
West. Exaggerated reports of his forces and the 
nature of his expedition were spread throughout 



WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 1 87 

the land. His name became coupled with stories of 
savage cunning and cruelty, and served as a house- 
hold bugaboo, the country over. The effect on 
the Illinois militia was singular enough, consider- 
ing the haste they had made to take the field : 
they instantly disbanded. 

A fresh levy was soon raised, but during the 
hiatus there were irregular hostilities all along the 
Illinois-Wisconsin border, in which Black Hawk 
and a few Winnebago and Pottawatomie allies,* 
succeeded in making life miserable enough for the 
settlers and miners. The most notable skirmishes 
were at Pecatonica, Blue Mounds and Sinsiniwa 
Movind, in Wisconsin; and Apple River, Plum 
River, Burr Oak Grove, Kellogg's Grove and 
Davis's Farm (near Ottawa), in Illinois. At Davis's 
Farm, a party of Pottawatomies and Sacs, under 
the notorious renegade, Mike Girty, captured two 
white girls, Sylvia and Rachel Hall, and it cost the 
Government two thousand dollars to redeem them 
from the Wisconsin Winnebagoes, in whose keep- 
ing they had been placed. In these border strifes, 
fully two hundred whites and nearly as many 
Indians lost their lives, and there were numerous 
instances of romantic heroism on the part of the 
settlers, men and women alike. 



* But few Pottawatomies engaged in the war, and they were young hot-heads anxious 
for any excuse to take a scalp and thus enter the rank of warriors. 



l88 WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

In about three weeks after Stillman's defeat the 
reorganized militia took the field, reinforced by the 
regulars under Atkinson. Black Hawk was forced 
to fly to Lake Koshkonong, and when the pursuit 
became too warm he hastily withdrew westward to 
the Wisconsin River. Closely following him were 
a brigade of Illinois troopers under General James 
D. Henry and a battalion of Wisconsin lead-mine 
rangers under Major Henry Dodge, afterwards gov- 
ernor of the Territory. 

The pursuers came up with the natives at Prairie 
du Sac. Here the south bank of the Wisconsin con- 
sists of steep, grassy bluffs, of three hundred feet 
altitude, hence the encounter which ensued is 
known in history as the Battle of Wisconsin 
Heights. W^ith consummate skill, Black Hawk 
made a stand on the summit of the heights, and 
with a small party of warriors held the whites in 
check until the non-combatants had crossed the 
broad river bottoms below and gained shelter upon 
the willow-grown shore opposite. The loss on 
either side was slight, the action being notable only 
for the Sac leader's superior management. 

During the night the passage of the river was 
fully accomplished by the fugitives. A large party 
was sent down stream upon a raft and in canoes 
bessfed from the Winnebao^oes; but those who took 
this method of escape were brutally fired upon 



WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 189 

near the mouth of the river by a detachment from 
the garrison at Prairie cki Chien, and fifteen killed 
in cold blood. The rest of the pursued, headed by 
Black Hawk — who had again made an attempt to 
surrender his forces to the white army, but failed 
for the want of a competent interpreter — pushed 
across country, guided by Winnebagoes, to the 
mouth of the Bad Ax, where, it will be remembered. 
Red Bird had attacked the keel-boats five years 
before. 

They were followed, three days behind, by the 
united army of regulars, who steadily gained on 
them. The country between the Wisconsin and 
the Mississippi is rough and forbidding in char- 
acter ; swamps and turbulent rivers are freely 
interspersed between the steep, thickly-wooded 
hills. The uneven pathway was strewn with the 
corpses of Sacs who had died of wounds and star- 
vation, and there were frequent evidences that the 
fleeing wretches were sustaining life on the bark 
of trees and the sparse flesh of their fagged-out 
ponies. 

On Wednesday, the first of August, Black Hawk 
and his now sadly depleted and almost famished 
band reached the Mississippi, near where the pict- 
uresque Bad Ax contributes its mite to the rolling 
flood. There were only two or three canoes to be 
had, and the crossing progressed slowly and with 



I go WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 

frequent loss of life. That afternoon a government 
supply steamer, the Warrior, from Prairie du 
Chien, appeared on the scene. The Indians a third 
time tried to surrender, but their white flag was 
fired at, and round after round of canister swept 
the camp. The next day the troops arrived on the 
heights above the river bench, the Warrior again 
opened its attack, and thus, caught between two 
galling fires, the poor savages soon succumbed. 
But fifty remained alive on the spot to be taken 
prisoners. Some three hundred weaklings had 
reached the opposite shore through the hail of 
iron and lead. Of these three hundred helpless, 
half-starved, unarmed non-combatants, over one 
half were slaughtered by Wabashaw's Sioux who 
had been sent out to waylay them. So that out 
of the band of one thousand Indians who had 
crossed the Mississippi in April, not more than 
one hundred and fifty, all told, lived to tell the 
tragic story of the Black Hawk War — a tale 
frauQfht with dishonor to the American name. 

The rest can soon be told. The Winnebago 
guerrillas, who had played fast and loose during 
the campaign, delivered to the whites at Prairie du 
Chien, the unfortunate Black Hawk, who had fled 
from the Bad Ax to seek an asylum with his false 
friends. The proud old man, shorn of all his 
strength, was presented to the President at Wash- 



WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED. 19 1 

ington, forced to sign articles of perpetual peace 
and then turned over for safe keeping to Keokuk, 
his hated and hating rival. Black Hawk, with 
all his racial limitations, had in his character a 
strens^th and manliness of fiber that was most re- 
markable, and displayed throughout his brief cam- 
paign a positive genius for military evolutions. 
He may be safely ranked as one of the most in- 
teresting specimens of the North American savage 
to be met with in history. 

The immediate and lasting results of the Black 
Hawk War were not only the humbling of the 
Indians of Wisconsin and Illinois, but the wide 
advertising of the country through which the con- 
test had been waged. During and soon after the 
war, the newspapers of the Eastern States were 
filled with descriptions, more or less florid, of the 
scenic charms of the Rock River Valley, the groves 
and prairies on every hand, the park-like district of 
the Four Lakes, the Wisconsin-River highlands 
and the picturesque hills and almost impenetrable 
forests of Western Wisconsin. Books and pam- 
phlets were issued from the press by the score, giv- 
ing accounts of the newly-discovered paradise, and 
soon a tide of immigration set in towards Northern 
Illinois and Southern Wiscc)nsin. Then neces- 
sarily followed, in short season, the survey and 
opening to sale of public lands heretofore reserved. 



192 IVISCONS/N BECOMES AMERICAN/ZED. 

and the purchase of what hunting grounds were 
still in possession of Indian tribes. The develop- 
ment of Wisconsin thus received a sudden and 
enormous impetus, so that when it was divorced 
from Michigan, in 1836, and reared into an inde- 
pendent Territory, there were about twelve thou- 
sand whites within the borders of the nascent 
commonwealth, and many of the sites of future 
cities of the State were occupied by permanent 
ao-ricultural settlers. 



CHAPTER VII. 



TERRITORIAL DAYS. 




NE of the articles of 
the Ordinance for the 
government of the 
old Northwest Ter- 
ritory, adopted by the 
Congress of the Con- 
federation in 1787, 
and confirmed by the 
United States Con- 
gress two years later, 
provided that the great Territory should be even- 
tually cut up into five States: three, south of "an 
east and west line drawn through the southerly 
bend or extreme of Lake Michigan," and the other 
two north of it. When Ohio, Indiana and Illinois 
came to be staked out, each succeeded, upon one 
pretext or another, in o'ettins: Cons^ress to violate 
this article of division, in order to allow them to 
encroach upon the country north of the famous 
"east and west line," and 'thereby gain harbors 
upon the Great Lakes. Ohio thus obtained a 

19.3 



194 TERRITORIAL DAYS. 

wedge-shaped strip, extending westward from Mau- 
mee Bay along her northern border, and averaging 
six miles in width. When Michigan came to be 
formed, there was a deal of dissatisfaction at this 
trespass on the part of Ohio, and the Wolverines 
were given what is now known as the Upper 
Peninsula, in order to appease them — this rich 
tract being taken from what belonged to the future 
Wisconsin, it havino- all alonor been ao;reed that 
Lake Michigan should separate the two northern 
States when they came to be erected. Indiana 
was allowed a strip ten miles wide, Michigan not 
then considering the territory thus taken from her 
as worth quarreling over. Illinois was, however, 
the boldest land-o^rabber. In 1818, Congress sfave 
her an additional section sixty-one miles wide, 
straight along her north line from Lake Michigan 
to the Mississippi River; upon this splendid tract 
of eight thousand five hundred square miles of rich 
agricultural and mining land, there are to-day 
planted the thriving cities of Chicago, Freeport, 
Rockford, Waukegan, Dixon, Galena, Elgin and 
Evanston, and between them a populous and pro- 
gressive rural region. Had the original agreement 
been carried out, this country would to-day belong 
to Wisconsin instead of Illinois. 

The old Northwest Territory had for its western 
boundary the Mississippi River to its source, and 



TERRITORIAL DAYS. 1 95 

thence a line running directly north to the inter- 
national boundary. If the letter and the spirit of 
the Ordinance of 1787 had been carried out, Wis- 
consin, as the fifth State in the Territory, would 
have had all of the land between Lake Michio-an 

O 

and the Mississippi — a grand stretch of country, 
in width seven hundred miles as the crow flies, be- 
tween the Sault Ste. Marie and the Lake of the 
Woods. We have seen how she was despoiled of 
the Upper Peninsula by Michigan, and of an enor- 
mous belt to the south, by Illinois ; afterwards, in 
1848, when she became a State, Congress took 
from her, to give to Minnesota, the country be- 
tween the St. Croix River and the Upper Missis- 
sippi, of which St. Paul, Minneapolis and Duluth 
are to-day the leading cities. 

When the Northwest Territory was first divided, 
in 1800, what is now Wisconsin was included in 
Indiana Territory, and thus remained until 1S09, 
when the new Territory of Illinois took her under 
its wing. In 1818, when Illinois became a State, 
Michigan Territory was given charge of the coun- 
try west of Lake Michigan and north of the Illinois 
line. In 1834, there was added to Michigan Ter- 
ritory, "for temporary purposes" of administration, 
the country extending west to the Missouri and 
the White Earth rivers, so that now Michigan 
extended from Detroit westward to a point eighty- 



196 TERRITORIAL DAYS. 

five miles northwest of the present city of Bismarck, 
Dakota. In 1836, Wisconsin Territory was organ- 
ized, stretching from Lake Michigan, with the 
exception of the Michigan Upper Peninsula, to 
the extreme western limits we have described. In 
1838, Congress created from Wisconsin's trans- 
Mississippi country, the Territory of Iowa ; and 
ten years later, as before stated, gave to the new 
State of Minnesota that portion of Wisconsin 
lying west and northwest of the St. Croix, thus 
leavino- the Badoer State with the boundaries now 
possessed by her — boundaries quite ample, how- 
ever; for though, as the youngest sister in the 
family of Northwest commonwealths, obliged to 
take what was left after the others had been satis- 
fied, she still has a territory of fift3^-four thousand 
square miles, which is surpassed only by the fifty- 
six thousand of Illinois and the fifty-seven thou- 
sand of Michigan, while Ohio boasts of but forty 
thousand and Indiana of thirty-five thousand. 

The act creating the Territory of Wisconsin had 
long been incubating in Congress. As early as 
1824, James Duane Doty, that year appointed 
United States circuit judge at Green Bay, began 
an agitation looking to this result, his first propo- 
sition being, to call the country " Chippewau." 
Afterwards, in 1827, we find him, not at all dis- 
couraoed over the failure of the movement, want- 



TERRITORIAL DAYS. 197 

ing to call the region " Wiskonsin," in honor of its 
principal river — this being Judge Doty's phonetic 
rendering of the old French " Ouisconsin." In 
1830 he wanted his proposed Territory called 
"Huron," and four years later "Wisconsin" was 
suggested. This last title was adopted by Con- 
gress, and after many trials and tribulations, among 
which was a quarrel over the northeast boundary, 
with the Michigan people, the bill passed and was 
approved April 20, 1836, taking effect the fourth 
of July following. 

Henry Dodge, whom President Jackson ap- 
pointed as the first Territorial governor, had been 
one of the leading spirits in the lead-mines, and 
was in command of the Michigan militia west of 
Lake Michigan during the Red Bird uprising and 
the Black Hawk War. A man of fine physical ap- 
pearance, prompt action and pompous manner, he 
won the reputation of being a brave and dashing 
partisan leader, instilling fear into the breasts of 
the Winnebagoes over whom he was fond of domi- 
neering, and fostering emulation among the pict- 
uresque band of free rangers whom he led forth to 
scouting service along the threatened frontier. 
Dodge was deficient in early education and was 
greatly overestimated by the majority of his con- 
temporaries; nevertheless he discharged his various 
public duties, military and civil, in a creditable 



198 TERRJ20RIAL DAYS. 

manner. Upon the appointed fourth of July, the 
new governor, together with his civil staff and the 
three judges, amid noisy public rejoicing took the 
oath of office at Mineral Point, in the heart of 
the lead region, then the principal settlement of the 
Territory. 

The first legislative session was held at a newly- 
platted town called Belmont, in the present county of 
Lafayette, There were thirteen members in the 
upper house, or council, and twenty-six in the house 
of representatives — Henry S. Baird, a Green Bay 
lawyer, being elected president of the council, and 
Peter H. Engle, of Dubuque, speaker of the house. 
The legislature sat in a story-and=a-half frame house, 
battlement-fronted ; the highway which it faced 
bristled with stumps, while lead-miners' shafts and 
prospectors' holes thickly dimpled the shanty 
neighborhood. 

The chief business of the session was, organ- 
Izins: the Territorial administration, dividinor the 
Territory into counties and establishing county 
seats, borrowinor monev with which to run the 
new government, incorporating three banks — at 
Dubuque, Mineral Point and Milwaukee, all of 
which failed and involved considerable loss to 
some of the settlers — and fixing the seat of Ter- 
ritorial government. 

The contest over the location of the capital proved 



TERRITORIAL DAYS. 1 99 

to be the most exciting struggle of the session, and 
aroused a spirit of bitterness which was felt in 
legislative circles through many succeeding years. 
A month was spent in skirmishing, during which 
the claims of Milwaukee, Racine, Koshkonong, 
Fond du Lac, Green Bay, Madison, Wisconsin- 
apolis, Peru, Wisconsin City, Portage, Helena, 
Belmont, Mineral Point, Platteville, Cassville, Belle- 
view and Dubuque were successively urged. Many 
of these towns merely existed on paper and in the 
minds of real-estate speculators. A wild spirit of 
town-site rivalry had been born with the Territory, 
and the Eastern markets had early been flooded 
with prospectuses, maps and " bird's-eye views " of 
"cities" which were thoroughly equipped, in these 
florid descriptions and fanciful pictures, with court- 
houses, jails, hospitals, schools and other modern 
improvements. 

One of the most notable of these " boom " towns 
was Kewaunee. Here, at the foot of the bluff 
where Kewaunee River empties into Lake Mich- 
igan, an unknown explorer thought he had found 
gold in paying quantity. There was a mad scram- 
ble for the scene of the discovery. Such men as 
Salmon P. Chase, who in after years became chief 
justice of the United States, and John Jacob Astor, 
the prince of fur traders, were eager purchasers of 
real estate in the town plat, at ridiculously high 



200 TERRITORIAL DAYS. 

figures. By the year 1836, when the excitement 
was at its height, Kewaunee aspired to rivalry 
with Chicago. But there was not enough of the 
precious metal to pay for the extraction, the bubble 
collapsed, and to-day the denizens of the modest 
little town marvel at the stories the pioneers tell 
of those stirring times when Kewaunee was deemed 
the El Dorado of the Northwest. 

What was called Madison was then a virgin for- 
est situated on a narrow isthmus between Third 
and Fourth Lakes. Under the tall oaks, the rolling 
sward lay as smooth as a well-kept lawn, for the 
annual grass-fires set by the Indians kept the un- 
derbrush down ; the center of the isthmus was a 
pleasant, undulating valley, and the high ridges on 
either side bathed their feet in the blue waters of 
the lakes, which were frinoed with fraq-rant red 
cedar and framed in pebbly beaches. While of 
old a favorite resort for Indians, it had seldom 
been contaminated by the presence of the fur 
trader, and when Judge Doty selected it as the 
place for the capital it was a beauty-spot known to 
but few white men. 

Doty, it will be remembered, was a Michigan 
judge, with the country west of Lake Michigan as 
his circuit. When Wisconsin set up in business 
for itself, he was legislated out of ofiice. Few men 
knew W^isconsin from actual travel over the do- 



TERR no RIAL DAYS. 20I 

main, as well as he, and it had long been his secret 
hope to locate a city between these sylvan lakes. 
In connection with Stevens T. Mason, then gov- 
ernor of Michigan, he purchased from the Govern- 
ment some twelve hundred acres, with the present 
capitol park as the center, engaged a surveyor to 
plat a city there, which he styled Madison, after the 
ex-President, and was on hand at Belmont, early in 
the session, to fight for the proposed town. It 
has been asserted that choice town lots were 
freely distributed among members and those sup- 
posed to have influence with them. 

There was no lack of argument in favor of Madi- 
son ; there were quite important reasons why it 
should be chosen, aside from Doty's urgency and 
the natural beauty of the Four Lake region. Set- 
tlement was heaviest at Green Bay, at Milwaukee 
and among the lead mines. The conflicting inter- 
ests of these three sections seemed irreconcilable. 
The selection of Madison would be in the nature 
of a compromise ; then again, it was midway be- 
tween the great water highways of Lake Michigan 
and the Mississippi River, and to locate the capital 
there would assist in developing the interior of the 
Territory and equalizing settlement. But whatever 
arguments were the most cogent, and all were used, 
Madison invariably succeeded in every division by 
a close vote, in withstanding the opposition, and 



202 TERRITORIAL DAYS. 

late in November the location bill passed. It was 
provided that until the capitol provided for in the 
act was finished, the legislature should convene at 
Burlinston, now in the State of Iowa. 

The second legislative session, at Burlington, 
which opened November 6, 1S37, was chiefly 
notable for the passage of acts establishing the 
University of the Territory of Wisconsin, and in- 
corporating the Milwaukee and Rock River Canal 
Company. To aid this university, Congress was 
invited to appropriate twenty thousand dollars and 
two townships of land. The money was not given, 
but the land was, and this was the fundamental 
endowment of the present State University at 
ISIadison. As for the Canal Company, its pros- 
pects were based upon the idea that the Milwaukee 
and Rock rivers could be united by a canal, along 
an old portage trail long used by Indians and 
fur traders, and thus an easy waterway be estab- 
lished between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi. 
By Act of Congress, approved June 18, 1838, a 
liberal erant of land was made, to aid in the con- 
struction of this waterway. But the grant was not 
judiciously managed ; and between the Territorial 
officers, who were entrusted with the disposition of 
the lands and their proceeds, there grew up an an- 
tagonism which developed into political wrangles 
and personal strife. Litigation ensued, which oc- 



TERRITORIAL DAYS. 203 

cupied the courts and the legislature, off and on, 
until 1875, when the tiresome controversy was at 
last closed. The canal was never finished. 

Meanwhile, a clearing had been made in the 
woods at Madison, and the erection of the Terri- 
torial capitol commenced, the town thus far consist- 
ing for the most part of this government building 
of stone, and a few rude frame and log houses in 
the immediate neighborhood, reared for the board- 
ing of the builders. The infant city grew slowly, 
as the result of the necessities of the occasion, and 
it was long before the place had taken unto itself 
corporate pretensions. Yet Milwaukee was not 
much larger. When the legislature convened at 
Madison, the twenty-sixth of November, 1838, it 
was found that only fifty strangers could be lodged 
there, and a proposition was favored to adjourn to 
Milwaukee. But as the lake-shore metropolis could 
do no better, it was decided to stay at the capital 
and brave it out. 

Here is a genial picture of life at the backwoods 
seat of government, that winter, written by a local 
chronicler : * 

" With the session came crowds of people. The 
public houses were literally crammed — shake- 
downs were looked upon as a luxury, and lucky 

* Robert L. Ream, father of Vinnie Ream-Hoxie, the sculptress. The latter was bom 
in the old log tavern here mentioned by Mr. Ream — the first dwelling erected at the Wisconsin 
capital. 



204 TERRITORIAL DAYS. 

was the guest considered whose good fortune it 
was to rest his weary limbs on a straw or hay 
mattress. 

" We had then no theaters or any places of amuse- 
ment, and the long winter evenings were spent 
in playing various games of cards, checkers and 
backgammon. Dancing was also much in vogue. 
Colonel James Maxwell, member of council from 
Rock and Walworth, was very gay, and discoursed 
sweet music on the flute, and Ben. C. Eastman, 
one of the clerks, was an expert violinist. They 
two furnished the music for many a French four, 
cotillon, Virginia reel and jig, that took place on 
the puncheon floors of the old log cabins form- 
ine the Madison House. . . . Want of ceremony, 
fine dress, classic music and other evidences of 
present society life, never deterred us from enjoy- 
ino- ourselves those long winter evenings." 

This was long before railroads had reached Wis- 
consin. Travel through the new Territory was by 
boat, horseback or " French train." * There were 
no roads, except such as had been formed from the 
old deep-worn Indian trails which interlaced the 
face of the country, and traces of which can still be 
seen in many portions of the State. For the erec- 
tion of the capitol, it had been necessary to trans- 



* A " French train " was a deep box, generally six feet long by thirty-five inches broad, 
which slipped easily on the surface of the snow, when drawn by two horses tandem. 



TERRITORIAL DAYS. 205 

port saw-mill machinery and other heavy materials 
from the Milwaukee clocks overland to Madison, 
and the first wagons were for this purpose wheeled 
across the prairies and oak openings of Southeast- 
ern Wisconsin ; the ancient trail between the Four 
Lakes and Lake Michigan was followed by the 
pioneer teamsters, the rivers being swum by the 
horses, and the wagons and freight taken over in 
sections, in Indian canoes. In the rugged region 
of the southwest, wagons for the transportation of 
smelted ore to the river landings, and supplies to 
the "diggings," had early been introduced. Else- 
where in Wisconsin, there were as yet but few 
wheeled vehicles and no stage lines. 

Life was simple in those early Territorial days. 
The financial crisis of 1837 had checked immigra- 
tion in the West for a time, but Wisconsin capital 
was chiefly muscle and brain, and the crash among 
the banks did not seriously affect many of her peo- 
ple. The tide of humanity soon resumed its 
normal flow, again setting strongly towards the 
land of the Badgers.* The people either came 



* In early lead-mining days, the miners from Southern Illinois and further south re- 
turned home every winter and came back to the diggings in the spring, thus imitating the 
migrations of the fish popularly called the " sucker," in the Rock, Illinois and other south- 
flowing rivers of the region. For this reason, the south-winterers were jocosely called 
"Suckers," and Illinois became "The Sucker State." On the other hand, miners from the 
Eastern States were unable to return home every winter and at first lived in rude dug-outs — 
burrowing into the hillsides after the fashion of the badger ( Texidea aviericand). These men 
were the first permanent settlers in the mines north of the Illinois line, and Wisconsin thus 
became dubbed "The Badger State." Contrary to general belief, the badger itself is not fre- 
quently found in Wisconsin. 



2o6 TKRRITOR/AL DAYS. 

overland from New England or New York in their 
own rustic conveyances, or took boat to Detroit, 
Green Bay or Milwaukee, and then formed caravans 
proceeding into the interior. 

Accustomed, for the most part, to toiling with 
their hands, and unused to costly living, the immi- 
grants took kindly to the privations of their new 
surroundings on the frontier. Those privations, 
simplifying their tastes and causing them to look 
seriously upon the affairs of life, sharpened their 
intellects and gave to their children a heritage of 
brawn and sober purpose. 

Oftentimes, the Wisconsin settler was fifty or a 
hundred miles from a grist mill or a town, with 
nothing but an Indian trail or a blazed bridle-path 
through the forest, connecting him with his base of 
supplies. Perhaps his only excitement was the 
" raising bee," wherein neighbors for scores of miles 
around would gather to help the latest comer rear 
his log house or barn ; or, mayhap, the semi-annual 
trip to mill, post-ofifice and "store." Now and then, 
favored ones who chanced to live upon the trail, 
might have a chance to house the gossipy mail-car- 
rier over night, this functionary being sometimes a 
horseback rider, but more frequently a pedestrian, 
taking rec;ular trii)s which few would wish to walk 
in these days : between Green Bay and Portage, 
Green P)av and Chicairo, Milwaukee and Prairie (\\\ 



TERKnOIUAL DAYS. 207 

Chien, and the like.* To be upon the bank of a 
river or a lake where one of these great trails 
crossed, meant an opportunity to keep a ferry and 
perhaps make a few shillings from the entertain- 
ment of chance travelers. But these were excep- 
tional conditions. The average pioneer was either 
closely hemmed about by gloomy forests, or planted 
in the midst of a lonely sea of prairie now and then 
broken by island patches of scrub-oak and tangled 
hazel-brush. 

The stock of food brought by the pioneers was 
often considerable as to extent, although neces- 
sarily limited as to variety — flour and salt pork 
being the staples. But when this store was ex- 
hausted, it was often difficult to replenish it, and 
instances of sufferino- for want of the necessaries of 

O 

life were not rare. The rivers and numerous lakes 
were, however, usually well stocked with excellent 
fish ; and bear, deer and wild fowl were abundant in 
the earlier years of settlement. As for spiritual 
food, it was freely administered by itinerant preach- 
ers, who braved rare hardships while making their 
missionary circuits, and deserve to rank among 
the most daring of the pioneer class. Churches 

* The small weekly newspaper at Green Bay used to repeat this refrain at the head of its 
columns for some time after the establishment, in 1834, of the first mail route between Green 
Bay and Chicago : 

"Three times a week, without any fail, 
At four o'clock we look for the mail, 
Brouglit with dispatch on an Indian trail." 



2o8 TERRITORIAL DAYS. 

and schools were speedily organized in communi- 
ties sufficient!)' well settled, and from the first 
Wisconsin took a firm stand in the cause of secular 
and religious education. 

Willi these early agricultural colonists there 
came many professional men and men of affairs, 
for the most part young and ambitious of finding 
an opening in the new Territory for the making 
of either fame or wealth, or both. There were 
many such in the lead-mine district, at Prairie du 
Chien, in the Green Bay settlement and at the 
new town of INIilwaukee. Governor Dodge, at 
Dodgeville, soon became a conspicuous character 
among the miners, being a man of enterprise, vigor 
and daring; Colonel William Stephen Hamilton, a 
son of the famous Alexander Hamilton, was sta- 
tioned at "Hamilton's Diggings," now Wiota — 
a strange, roving character, who made, however, a 
strono- favorable impression uj)()n his fellows in the 
lead region ; another noted miner, who at the same 
time was a man of education, was John H. Roun- 
tree, at Platteville, who still lives, a venerable relic 
of those primitive days ; among the early lawyers 
of the mining district, Thomas P. lUirnett, Charles 
Dunn, Moses M. Strong and Mortimer I\T. Jackson 
were recognized as leading spirits, and afterwards 
acquired r(,'])utations whieh went out beyond the 
borders of the commonwealth. At Green Hay 



TERRITORIAL DAYS. 211 

there was a considerable coterie of bright men, 
who assisted in molding the State — of whom 
Henry S. Baird, James Duane Doty, Morgan L. 
Martin, William Dickinson and Ebenezer Childs 
may be cited as examples : the first three being dis- 
tinguished in law and politics, and the others in 
trade and manufactures. At Milwaukee there was 
Increase A. Lapham, a world-renowned naturalist 
and an active encourager of all good public enter- 
prises. Alexander Mitchell, the first and greatest 
Wisconsin banker, and in after days a prominent 
railway projector, was also a Milvvaukeean ; while 
Byron Kilbourn and George H. Walker were fair 
representatives of the business men who stoutly 
aided in the development of what grew to be the 
Wisconsin metropolis. At Prairie du Chien, the 
Brunsons and Dousmans were types of pioneers 
who figured prominently in the domains of the 
pulpit, the bar or the counting-room. 

In Territorial times the sessions of the le^isla- 
ture at Madison were the events of the year, and 
attracted prominent men from all quarters of 
Wisconsin. The crude hotels were filled each 
winter with legislators, lobbyists and visiting poli- 
ticians, and old settlers delight to rehearse the 
tales of what was done and said at these annual 
gatherings of the clans. 

The humors of the dav were often uncouth. 



212 TERRITORIAL DAYS. 

There was a deal of horse-play, hard-drinking and 
profanity, and occasionally a personal encounter 
during the heat of discussion; but an under-current 
of good-nature was generally observable, and strong 
attachments between leading men were more fre- 
quently noticeable than persistent feuds. Dancing 
and miscellaneous merry-making were quite the 
order of the times, and although there was a dearth 
of womenkind in these Madison seasons, society at 
the capital was thought to be fashionable. Even 
when the legislature was not in session, Madison 
remained the social and political center of the 
Territory, and travelers between the outlying set- 
tlements on the shores of the Mississippi, and Lake 
Michigan or Green Bay, were wont to relish tarry- 
ing there upon their w^ay; several have left us in 
journals and letters pleasing descriptions of their 
reception by the good-hearted inhabitants and the 
impressions made on them by the natural attrac- 
tions of this Wisconsin beauty-spot. 

The old Territorial legislature had much to do, 
winter by winter, in the carving out of new coun- 
ties ; the statutory laws required molding in de- 
tail ; there were political apportionments to make 
after each new census, in a domain which was rap- 
idly filling up with a robust American population, 
and there were now and then unfortunate cjuarrels 
with tlie Territorial 'j-owrnor. As a whc^le, the 



TERRITORIAL DAYS. 213 

quality of legislation was good, and there prevailed 
a healthy political tone, although there were now 
and then times when personal acrimony and parti- 
san prejudice appeared uppermost factors ; and the 
political pessimist might have found much to con- 
firm his forebodings, in the published reports of 
the sessions. 

One unfortunate affair occurred during the ses- 
sion of 1841-42, which cast a deep gloom over the 
community and gained for Wisconsin an unenvia- 
ble notoriety. In September, 1841, Dodge was re- 
moved from the governorship by President Tyler, 
and in his place was appointed Judge Doty. The 
new governor at once antagonized the legislature 
in his message upon opening the session early in 
December, by the assertion that no law of the Ter- 
ritory was effective until expressly approved by 
Congress. Over this unwarranted construction of 
the organic act, there followed a wordy dispute in 
which the governor was undoubtedly worsted. One 
of the results of these strained relations was, that a 
motion was made in the council to table the orov- 
ernor's nomination of one Baker to be sheriff of 
Grant County. On the eleventh of February, the 
debate on this motion led to a personal altercation 
between two of the councilors — Charles C. P. 
Arndt, of Brown County, and James R. Vineyard of 
Grant County. Upon the adjournment of the coun- 



2 14 TKKRHOKIAL DAYS. 

cil, these men, whom friends had separated during 
llic sitting, again met in one of the aisles, and 
Arndt liaving struck at Vineyard, the latter drew a 
pistol and shot his adversary dead. Vineyard sur- 
rendered to the sheriff of Dane County, in which 
Madison is situated, and from his cell sent in his 
resignation as member of the council. But that 
body declined to receive the paper or even allow it 
to be read, and promptly expelled the member from 
Grant. Vineyard was subsequently tried for man- 
slaughter, and acquitted. 

The news of this murderous quarrel within the 
very chamber of the Wisconsin Senate, at once 
spread throughout the country, and the newspapers 
of the day reported the affair in detail. Charles 
Dickens, the famous English author, was just then 
making his first tour of the United States, and the 
Wisconsin tragedy was cited in his American Notes 
as an instance of the tendency of public life in the 
wild West. The ijreat EnQrlishman, however, was 
too apt to view as tendencies what were but iso- 
lated instances of pioneer barbarism in America. 
The Arndt-Vineyard affair remains to this day as 
by far the most painful incident in the legislative 
records of Wisconsin. 

Governor Doty was a man of eminent ability, 
and the most ])r()minent citizen of W^isconsin, 
during Territorial days. lUit he was aggressive, 



TERRITORIAL DAYS. 215 

and impulse and passion often blinded his judg- 
ment. It was partly owing to this unfortunate 
temperament, in part to certain minor complica- 
tions in Wisconsin politics, and in a measure to the 
boundary disputes with the national government 
then pending, that his administration of three years 
was the stormiest in the history of the Territory. 

We have already seen how and why Wisconsin, 
as the fifth and last State to be formed out of the 
old Northwest Territory, was shorn of the Upper 
Peninsula by Michigan, and by a sixty-one-mile-wide 
strip along her southern border, by Illinois. There 
were, however, some incidents of these boundary 
quarrels with Congress and her two neighbors, de- 
serving of especial mention here. Both Governors 
Dodge and Doty vigorously asserted the " ancient " 
Territorial rights of Wisconsin, both as to Michigan 
and Illinois ; they did a great deal of " demanding," 
and issued many mysterious threats of what Wis- 
consin would do in case her " birthriorht " was not 
acknowledged. Committees of the Territorial leg- 
islature, to whom the boundary messages of these 
governors was referred, adopted the same defiant 
attitude. 

The southern boundary remained for years a 
particular bone of contention between Wisconsin 
and Illinois. Dodge worked himself into a very 
belligerent spirit over it, in 1839 and 1840. He 



2l6 TERKJTORJAL DAYS. 

ordered certain Illinois land commissioners out of 
the disputed tract; had popular elections held in 
the fourteen northern counties of Illinois to decide 
upon the question of jurisdiction, in which elections 
Wisconsin, curiously enough, carried the day ; he 
instigated conventions of Northern Illinois people 
who wanted to join Wisconsin, and altogether made 
it as uncomfortable as possible for the " Sucker " 
authorities stationed near the Wisconsin border. 

Hut the Territorial legislature of 1843-44 fairly 
distinguished itself in this jjrotracted controversy. 
Under Doty's lead, it adopted on the thirteenth 
of December, 1843, a series of resolutions which 
practically amounted to a declaration of secession. 
These resolutions declared that the United States 
had "infrins^ed" — mark the use of this term 
" infrincjed " — on the boundaries of the fifth State 
in the Northwest Territory, but that Wisconsin 
would pocket the insult if the general government 
would : 



1. Construct a railroad system between Lake Michigan and the Missis- 
sippi. 

2. Improve the Fox and Wisconsin rivers so as to make a national 
waterway between the Great Lakes and the great river. 

3. Connect the Fo.\ and Rock rivers by a canal. 

4. Construct harbors on the west shore of Lake Micliigan at Southpoit 
(Kenosha), Racine, Milwaukee, Sauk Harbor, Sheboygan and .Manitowoc. 



An address to Congress accompanied this report. 
Probably no State e\'er ad()i)ted a more belligerent 



TERR I TOR AL DAYS. 217 

attitude towards Congress than did Wisconsin in 
this remarkable document, which reads more Hke 
an emanation from an old-time South Carolina les- 
islature than the sober judgment of a community 
which was among the foremost, less than twenty 
years later, in putting down by force of arms the 
rebellion which was but the logical sequence of the 
doctrines which this address advocated. 

After pointing out to Congress the internal im- 
provements which Wisconsin would take as a balm 
for her injured sensibilities, the legislature declared 
that if Congress did not accede to these terms and 
would not admit Wisconsin to the Union with her 
ancient boundaries, she "would be a State out of 
the Union, and possess, exercise and enjoy all the 
rights, privileges and powers of the sovereign, inde- 
pendent State of Wisconsin, and if difficulties must 
ensue, we could appeal with confidence to the 
Great Umpire of nations to adjust them." " The un- 
authorized action of the general government " was 
sharply alluded to; Congress was given warning in 
plain terms that " the integrity of Wisconsin's 
boundaries must be observed," and that if peace- 
able means failed, she would, " whatever may be 
sacrificed," resort to " every other means in her 
power." The address closed with a call on Con- 
gress to "do justice, while yet it is not too late, to 
a people who have hitherto been weak and unpro. 



2l8 TERRITORIAL DAYS. 

tected, but who are rapidly rising to giant greatness, 
and wIk), at no distant day, will show to the world 
that they lack neither the disposition nor the 
ability to protect themselves." 

There is much literature of a similarly startling 
character hid away in the dry and dusty journals 
of the Wisconsin legislature, covering this epoch. 
These words of the fathers of Wisconsin, only forty- 
six years ago, are strange reading indeed, in the 
light of subsequent events. Imagine Dakota or 
Utah talkino- in this fashion to the fiftieth Conofress ! 
It is needless to add that the Congress of 1844 paid 
no attention whatever to the war talk from Wiscon- 
sin, which regained none of its territory; nor, until 
long after, did she secure any of the internal im- 
provements which she had so imperiously demanded. 

The year 1839 is notable for witnessing the com- 
mencement of " Mitchell's bank," from the first an 
important factor in the history of finance in Wis- 
consin. Early in the year, George Smith of Chi- 
cago, and Daniel Wells of Milwaukee, obtained 
from the legislature a charter enabling the Wiscon- 
sin Marine and Fire Insurance Company to do a 
eeneral insurino- and loaninor business. It was a 
time when the name " bank " was exxessively un- 
popular, especially in the West, the country being- 
filled with institutions thus entitled, whieh were 
issuing "wildcat" bills and doing a reckU^ss and 



TERRITORIAL DAYS. 219 

disreputable business. The Smith and Wells 
charter went on to specify what the new insurance 
company might do, which specifications covertly 
included all that a legitimate bank would wish to 
do ; yet in deference to the popular prejudice, it was 
with unconscious humor expressly stipulated that 
"nothing herein contained shall crive bankino- 
privileges." 

A recently-imported young banker from Aber- 
deen, Scotland, named Alexander Mitchell, was 
given the secretaryship of the institution, which 
opened its doors in Milwaukee. At once, Mitchell, 
though commencing upon a small salary, became 
the life of the concern, which soon beean to do a 
thriving business in assisting colonists to take up 
government land, and in issuing certificates of de- 
posit. The latter, in the general scarcity of repu- 
table currency, came into wide use as a circulating 
medium. They were invariably paid on presenta- 
tion, a remarkable circumstance in those days of 
rotten banking. At one time Mitchell had out 
over a million and a half dollars' worth of this 
paper, the integrity of which rested simply on his 
promise to pay. 

The business was managed with consummate skill, 
and " Mitchell's bank," although nominally but an 
insurance company and without legal authority to 
do banking, attained a national reputation and 



2 20 TERRITORIAL DAYS. 

proved a rare boon to the people of the entire 
Northwest, being the onl)- financial concern of 
that region which stood the pressure of the times 
and maintained its integrity without a flaw. 

Mitchell, who became in a few years the propri- 
etor as well as the manager of the enterprise, was 
no less a legislative lobbyist than a financier. The 
legislature was frequently importuned by his jealous 
rivals to check him in his prosperous, although 
somewhat lawless, career, and his time was divided 
between handling the law-makers and attending, to 
his legitimate business. In 1845, ^^^ franchise 
was annulled, and thereafter he was continually in 
hot water with the legislature. But when stopped 
at Milwaukee, he invariably paid his notes in Chi- 
cago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Detroit and elsewhere, 
and not for a moment was " Mitchell's bank " 
ever closed. These legislative struggles mate- 
rially helped him by advertising his bank and by 
cultivating for him the popular sympathy — his 
certificates being always regarded " as good as 
gold" — and after a time the Territorial govern- 
ment itself was obliged to borrow money from him 
to meet its current expenses, and paid him ten per 
cent, for the accommodation. Finally, in 1852, 
when a general free-banking act was passed, 
Mitchell called in his certificates, (^n which he 
joaid dollar for dollar in. gold, and adding the 



TERRITORIAL DAYS. 221 

word " Bank " to his insurance title, started the 
first resfular bank in Milwaukee. It lono- remained 
a rock amid the turbulent sea of wild-cat banking, 
which lasted for several years after that, and to this 
day " Mitchell's bank " is one of the stoutest finan- 
cial institutions in the United States. 

The reformation of society was not usually the 
" fad " of early Western pioneers. A people whose 
hearts throbbed with fresh hope, who were nerved 
by ambition and aglow with expectations, furnished 
but few pessimists. There were such, however, 
and the fact illustrates the universality of the emi- 
grating mania which seized the people of the East- 
ern States during the '40's and the early '50's. 
Fourier himself was unable to even test his pro- 
posed system of communism ; but Fourierism 
floated to America and found an advocate in 
Horace Greeley, who preached the new " ism " in 
the columns of the New York Tribune. 

It was from reading in the Tribune Mr. Greeley's 
earnest exposition of " the science of the new social 
relations " and " the principle of equitable distribu- 
tions," that a number of well-meaning people at Ken- 
osha (then Southport) determined to put Fourierism 
into practice right here in Wisconsin. They came 
to the conclusion that the world, as Mr. Mantalini 
used to say, was " going to the demnition bow-wows," 
and that it was time to reorganize society in such 



222 TERKJIOKJAL DAYS. 

a manner as to "guard against our present social 
evils," that manner being Fourier's. 

Accordingly a stock association was formed, 
with shares at twenty-five dollars each, and bear- 
ins the warlike title of " The Wisconsin Phalanx." 
In the bright spring days of 1844, a caravan of one 
hundred and fifty enthusiastic reformers, in ox-carts 
and horse wagons, with droves of cattle and abun- 
dant implements of husbandry and the household, 
wended its way over swelling prairies and wooded 
hills, into the peaceful valley of the Ceresco, near 
where the city of Ripon now stands. The Phalanx, 
at first established in temporary quarters, took pos- 
session a year later of a large building " four hun- 
dred feet in length, consisting of two rows of 
tenements, with a hall between, under one roof." 
While all ate in common, each family lived in its 
own compartment. Labor was voluntary, in com- 
mon fields and shops, under Phalanx officials, and 
each person received credit according to his value 
as a worker. When, at the end of the year, the 
net profits were divided, the dividends varied ac- 
cording to this record of toil. Their business and 
social meetings were in the evenings; Tuesday 
evening was given up to the literary and debating 
club, Wednesday to the singing school and Thurs- 
day to dancing. 

Mad each member been equally capable with his 



TERRITORIAL DAYS. 223 

neio-hbor, had the faitiilies been of the same size, 
had there been no jealousies, no bickerings, had 
they been without ambition : had they, in short, 
been contented, the Phalanx might have remained 
a success. They were clothed, fed and housed at 
less expense than their neighbors without the pale; 
they had many social enjoyments not known else- 
where in the valley, and according to all the social 
philosophers should have been a happy people. 
But the strong and the willing came to see that 
they were yoked to men who were weak and sloth- 
ful ; natural abilities were not given full play; there 
was no rew^ard for individual excellence. It was a 
time, too, when shrewd men of the world, all around 
them, were making fortunes in land speculations 
and other enterprises. This was not possible in 
the Phalanx. Its members considered themselves 
hampered by their bond ; and ceasing to have a 
Quixotic care for the reformation of society were 
only too anxious to get back into the whirl of that 
human struggle for existence, which they had once 
decried. For seven years the Phalanx stood its 
ground and then melted away. The farm, which 
had greatly increased in value, was divided among 
the members, at a fair profit to each. A desire to 
share in the increase, and to engage in individual 
speculation, were the main causes of the failure of 
this interesting experiment in communism. 



2 24 TERRJIOKJAJ. DAYS. 

Of a quite different type 'was another commu- 
nistic effort, in these old Territorial days, Down 
in Nauvoo, Illinois, on tlie banks of the Mississippi, 
there had grown up a large and prosperous settle- 
ment of polygamous fanatics under the guidance 
of that profligate knave, Joseph Smith, calling 
themselves Latter Day Saints. At Burlington, a 
pretty little village in Racine County, Wisconsin, 
there was an erratic but somewhat cultured lawyer, 
named James Jesse Strang. He had entered life in 
Cayuga County, New York, in 1813, as a farmer's 
boy. Endowed with an active but eccentric intel- 
lect, and a retentive memory, he cultivated a keen 
desire for notoriety. In early manhood he taught 
school, delivered temperance lectures, was a political 
worker, edited a country newspaper, and finally, in 
1843, drifted out to Wisconsin as a lawyer, leaving 
behind him in his native region a reputation for a 
wonderful "gift of gab" and overweening self- 
esteem. 

The Mormon church was meeting with surpris- 
ing success and offered a field for distinction to men 
of the Strang type, which he was quick to take ad- 
vantage of. In January, 1844, he visited Smith at 
Nauvoo ; in February he was baptized, and in March 
became an elder, at once being accepted as a valu- 
able agent in the work of the church. Wisconsin 
was assigned to his charge. In June followinq^, 



TERRITORIAL TJAYS. 225 

Joseph and Hiram Smith were slain by a mob, and 
Strang, although a convert of but five months' 
standing, became a candidate for the succession to 
Joseph. He displayed documents purporting to be 
written by Joseph before the " martyrdom," author- 
izing Strang to " plant a stake of Zion," or in other 
words a branch of the church, on White River, near 
the latter's home in Burlington, the specified dis- 
trict covering territory both in Racine and Wal- 
worth counties. 

Strang was denounced by " the twelve apostles " 
of the church at Nauvoo as an impostor, and his 
documents were declared vulgar forgeries. Being 
driven from the Illinois paradise, he returned to 
Wisconsin, and establishing himself in " the chosen 
land " on White River, called the place Voree ; from 
here he issued a pronunciamento declaring that 
he had been appointed by Joseph Smith as the lat- 
ter's successor in the presidency. He also claimed 
to have visions, wherein the angel of the Lord ad- 
vised him that Nauvoo had been " cut off " and that 
Voree was now the City of Promise. Adherents 
began to arrive in April, 1845. ^^ January follow- 
ing, he started a little four-page monthly paper 
called the Voree Herald, in which he published his 
visions, called on the Saints to rally to his stand- 
ard, and abused the " Brighamites " at Nauvoo in 
lanoruaq-e more viq-orous than refined. 



2 26 TERRIJOKIAL DAYS. 

He was an active charlatan, with plausible man- 
ners, and soon gathered a number of ardent follow- 
ers at Voree, besides conducting missions among 
"primitive Mormons" in Ohio, New York and 
other Eastern and Central States. The Herald for 
September, 1846, claimed that the Sunday gather- 
ings at Voree numbered " from one to two thousand 
people," and that the " stake of Zion " was growing 
apace; "its population," said the Herald, "dwell 
in plain houses, in board shanties, in tents, and 
sometimes many of them in the open air." The 
colony was organized on the plan of community in 
ownership, but in matters of government, both 
spiritual and temporal. President Strang was a dic- 
tator. He claimed to be divinely inspired, even in 
matters of the pettiest detail. 

Imitating Joseph Smith in most of his methods, 
Strang, like Joseph, pretended to discover the word 
of God in deep-hidden records. Joseph unearthed 
the Book of Mormon in the hills of Ontario; so 
did Strang dig up certain curious brazen plates 
at Voree, which the angel of the Lord enabled 
him to translate for the Herald into a meaningless 
hotchpotch, phrased in the familiar style of Holy 
Writ. Afterwards Strang made a considerable 
collection of such plates, discovered by himself, 
and in general displayed much ingenuity in duping 
his company of vulgar fanatics. 



TERRnORJAL DAYS. 227 

Voree became so prosperous that Strang estab- 
lished a branch " stake " on Beaver Island, in the 
lonely archipelago near the mouth of Lake Michi- 
gan. This was in May, 1847. He found great 
difficulty with the resident fishermen, who did not 
favor the Mormon invasion ; but the stake grew in 
the face of obstacles reared by both man and nature, 
and in two or three years' time there were two thou- 
sand devotees gathered on Beaver Island, with neat 
houses, a saw-mill, roads, docks and a large taber- 
nacle. When Strang moved to the island, Voree 
ceased to be headquarters for the primitive Mor- 
mons. The new island city was dubbed St. James, 
and in 1850 the colony was reorganized as a " king- 
dom," having a " royal press," foreign embassadors 
and all the paraphernalia of an infant empire. 
Strang was " king, apostle, prophet, seer, revelator 
and translator." The community system was aban- 
doned, tithes were collected, polygamy was for the 
first time established — King James being allowed 
five wives — tea, coffee and tobacco were prohibited, 
and schools and debating clubs opened ; while from 
the royal press was issued a paper, at first weekly, 
but afterwards daily, called the Northern Islander, 
which was the official organ of the court and its 
attendant "angels and apostles." 

A certain sort of civilization prevailed. There 
were creature comforts in reasonable abundance. 



2 28 TERRllORIAL DAYS. 

and a degree of thrift. The women wore the 
Bloomer costume, and were generally coarse and 
sensual ; the men were rough and illiterate. As 
for Stransf himself, he was an emotional orator who 
understood well the art of swaying untrained 
minds ; he was " a man of vigorous frame, light 
complexion, and high forehead, intellectual, fluent 
in speech, of suave manners, and very companion- 
able." Nevertheless, the Gentile fishermen came 
to hate King Strang, with all the bitterness capable 
to their untamed natures, and his empire was con- 
tinually at warfare with the people of the neighbor- 
ing isles. There were too, in his own camp, busy 
enemies who were jealous of his often harsh and 
always absolute sway. In 185 1, the Beaver Island 
magnate, at the instigation of some of the Saints, 
was taken to Detroit on board a United States war 
steamer, to answer to charges of treason, of rob- 
bing the mails, of squatting on government land, 
and what not, but was acquitted. In 1855, how- 
ever, he fell a victim, like many another kingly 
ruler, to conspiracy among his subjects. He was 
assassinated on the sixteenth of June by two fellow 
Mormons. 

Strang did not pass away at once. He was 
taken back on a stretcher, to his long-abandoned 
Vnrcc, where until death he was carefully attended 
by his first and lawful wife; the poor woman had 



TERRITORIAL DAYS. 229 

declined to adhere to him during his fanatical and 
polygamous career on Beaver Island, but was pos- 
sessed of the idea that death could alone dissolve 
their marriage relations. Dying on the ninth of 
July, he was buried on the prairie at Voree (now 
Spring Prairie), and his grave is still unmarked. 
Voree was, soon after his death, abandoned by the 
Mormons. As for his island kingdom, it did not 
survive him. The Gentile fishers came with torch, 
axe and bludgeon. The royal city was razed, the 
Saints were banished, and there are now few visible 
signs that an empire once flourished in the Mich- 
igan archipelago. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



"BAKSTOW and the 15ALANCE. 




N September, 1844, 
Doty was removed 
from the governor- 
ship to be succeeded 
by Nathaniel P. Tall- 
madge, who in turn 
served for but eight 
months, being re- 
placed by Dodge, 
who, as the nominee 
of President Polk, filled the executive chair for 
three years more, until Wisconsin entered the lists 
of the Union. 

Dodge had no sooner regained possession of his 
old seat, than the agitation for statehood com- 
menced. Wisconsin had then a population of about 
one hundred and fifty thousand, and the legislature 
asked the people to vote upon a ])roposition to 
accept the new relation. When the ballots were 
counted, the first Tuesday in Aj^ril, 1846, it was 

found that a large majority desired Wisconsin to 

230 



''BAR STOW AXD THE BALANCE:' 23 1 

become a State. A constitutional convention met 
at Madison, between the fifth of October and the 
sixteenth of December following. In this conven- 
tion it was attempted by some pugnacious mem- 
bers, reviving the squabble of earlier years, to place 
a proviso in the constitution to the effect that Wis- 
consin would enter the Union on condition that 
she be "restored to her ancient boundaries." This 
effort failed, as did also one to establish a new 
State to the north, to be called " Superior," and to 
command the entire southern shore of that Great 
Lake. When the constitution was voted upon by 
the people, in April, 1847, the document was re- 
jected and a new convention was ordered at a spec- 
ial legislative session. 

The second constitutional convention met at 
the capital, the fifteenth of December, 1847. A 
new census of the Territory had revealed a popula- 
tion of 210,546, and the importance of entering 
the sisterhood of States had become evident to all. 
The new constitution avoided the rocks on which 
the other had been wrecked, by leaving several 
mooted questions — banks and exemptions chiefly 
— for subsequent legislative decision. It was 
adopted by the people in March, 1848, and the 
congressional act admitting Wisconsin to the 
Union was approved the twenty-ninth of May 
following. The first State election was held on 



- J- 



BAKSTOW AND THE BALANCE:' 



the eighth of May, Nelson Dewey, Democrat, being 
elected governor by a majority of 5,089 in a total 
of 33.987 votes. 

The machinery of the new State was soon in 
eood workinir condition. From the first the 
Badger commonwealth took front rank in the pas- 
sage of liberal laws, and the oencrous maintenance 
of a high order of public institutions. Its chari- 
table, reformatory, penal and educational systems, 
some of them well inaugurated in Territorial times, 
w'ere placed upon a firm footing under the State 
government, and have ever since progressed with 
regularity, being extended and improved with the 
o-rowth of the commonwealth and the development 
of scientific methods. 

The population of Wisconsin had been increas- 
ing with rapidity for several years past, but the 
formation of the State gave a new impetus to its 
growth — the increase during the two years follow- 
ing 1848 being nearly ninety-five thousand. Wis- 
consin's attractions were cheap and rich lands, 
valuable lead mines, immense pine forests and 
practically unlimited water-power along its many 
beautiful rivers. 

In 1850, the national census revealed the pres- 
ence here of 305,391 white ])ersons, against 30,945 
in 1840 — an increment of 886.8 per cent, in one 
decade. No other American commonwealth, ex- 



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4^ , a,# <X^ 




•^'f 4,y^^' 



id. 



'^^ 



^*7 'A, ^ 




^^-r^p.^Y^'^^'^^^ 



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BY LAKE AND RIVER. 



''BARSTOW AND THE BALANCED 235 

cept Minnesota, has exceeded this increase in any 
decade in its history. Wisconsin has continued to 
have a large and healthy growth in population, but 
those ten years following 1840 have never been 
equalled, nor are they ever likely to be. The new- 
comers, while largely from New York, New Eng- 
land and Ohio, included many thousands of 
European immigrants — Germans, Scandinavians, 
Irish, Poles, Belgians, Dutch, Swiss, English and 
Scotch. This constant and enormous accretion of 
foreign blood has made Wisconsin one of the most 
interesting fields in the United States for the study 
of race amalgamation. 

The impeachment trial of Levi Hubbell, judge of 
the second judicial circuit, in 1853, was a notable 
event in the history of the State. On the twenty- 
sixth of January, a communication was sent in to 
the assembly, by William K. Wilson, a private 
citizen, charging Judge Hubbell with " high crimes 
and misdemeanors, and malfeasances in office." 
The judge being one of the most prominent men 
in Wisconsin, these charges created much excite- 
ment both in the legislature and among the people. 
The assembly at once placed the case in the 
hands of a special committee, which on the 
twenty-third of February reported charges and 
specifications and recommended his removal from 
office. Upon receiving this report, the assembly 



236 '' BARSTOIV AND THE BALANCE:' 

decided to proceed against Hubbcll by impeach- 
ment. The senate, sitting as a court, ordered that 
a special session be held, commencing the sixth of 
June, for the trial of the case. The trial attracted 
a large crowd of spectators and elicited great popu- 
lar interest, with no small degree of factional bit- 
terness. It lasted until the eleventh of July, when 
the senate rendered its verdict of " not guilty of 
the charges of corrupt conduct in office, nor of 
crimes and misdemeanors." The closing argu- 
ment of the counsel for the assembly, Edward G. 
Ryan, of Milwaukee, afterwards chief justice of 
the State, was without doubt the most acute and 
brilliant oratorical effort ever made at the Wiscon- 
sin bar, and at once obtained for him a national 
reputation. It is still studied in some of the 
Western law schools as a model of its kind. 

Another and even more celebrated trial was held 
at Madison in 1856, and in this, too, Mr. Ryan was 
one of the principal attorneys. William A. Bar- 
stow, of Waukesha County, had been secretary of 
state in 1850 and 1851, during Governor Dewey's 
second term. Barstow was a fine-appearing man, 
bold, energetic, aggressive in character, and from 
his first advent into politics commanded a large 
and enthusiastic following. A stout Democrat, he 
was regarded as a shining light in his party; but 
owing to dissensions, chiefly growing out of the 



'' BARSTOIV AND THE BALANCED 237 

fight over the first constitution, the Wisconsin 
democracy had become divided in their councils, 
and Barstow, as secretary of state, was the leader 
of a faction. His enemies were unstinted in their 
abuse of him. It was a time when bitter person- 
alities pervaded the political newspapers, and in- 
vectives in stump harangues were regarded as 
equivalent to arguments. His enemies did not 
hesitate to call Barstow by some pretty hard 
names, and charges of corruption were freely laid 
at his door. 

An expressive epithet grew out of this condition 
of affairs, which long lived in Wisconsin politics. 
One member of a firm of Madison printers and 
newspaper publishers, wrote cheeringly to his 
absent partner of their prospects for getting the 
State printing contract. The bids were, under the 
statute, to be sent in to the secretary of state, and 
opened and passed upon by that officer, the state 
treasurer and attorney general. The printer, who 
was a friend of the administration, assured his col- 
league that he had made arrangements for inside 
knowledge of the bidding, adding " We must get 
a good bid. . . . even if we have to buy up 
Barstow and the balance " — meaning, by " bal- 
ance," the other State officials enofao^ed in the 
letting. It is among the things unknowable, 
whether the secretary was or was not rightly 



23<S - BARSTOW AND THE BALAACEr 



judged by the ambitious printer; but tlie indiscreet 
letter was found, and j)ronii:)tly published in a rival 
journal,* so that ever after that the faction in 
power was derisively known as " Barstow and 
the Balance " — a taking catch-phrase for the 
opposition. 

The close of his secretaryship did not retire 
Barstow from the public gaze. He remained a 
powerful leader in his party, and at his devoted 
breast were levelled the cross-bows of his now 
numerous foes. During the early months of 1853, 
the State legislature was being importuned for a 
charter, by a party of speculators calling them- 
selves the Rock River Valley Union Railroad 
Company. It was the first time that a Wisconsin 
legislature had been " worked " by a railroad lobby, 
and the methods employed this winter were such 
as to cause a sensation throughout the State and 
scandalize many good citizens. The lobbyists en- 
o-ao-ed a club house, which they called " Monk's 
Hall," and herein were given superb dinners and 
held midnight orgies, the remembrance of which 
is still vivid in the minds of those who participated 
in them. While the " Monks of Monk's Hall " 
represented all shades of political belief, Barstow 
and some of his adherents were popularly supposed 
to be largely interested in the unholy enterprise. 

* Wisconsin Democrat (Madison), October 5, 1S50. 



'' BARSTOIV AND THE BALANCED 239 

The " Monks" were dubbed " The Forty Thieves" 
by those who deemed them no better than the 
company AH Baba found in the forest cave, in 
olden time ; and the convenient term, to this day 
a famiHar one in Wisconsin political phraseology, 
soon became fastened by their enemies upon the 
Barstow political coterie in particular, thus losing 
its original significance as an epithet for the rail- 
road lobbyists. 

The succeeding fall, Barstow was elected gover- 
nor for the years 1854-55, having a plurality of 
8,519 over Edward D. Holton, Republican, and 
Henry S. Baird, Whig. An aggressive tone per- 
vaded his administration, and the existing political 
bitterness was intensified. Like all positive men, 
Barstow had a capacity for making enemies as well 
as friends, and the former complained that he 
allowed his of^cial staff to mismanage the State 
school funds, and favor personal friends in the 
loaning of State money. Whatever truth there 
may have been in these assertions, it is certain 
that Barstow had lost ground during his term, 
and although re-nominated failed to draw out his 
full party strength in the November election of 
1855. The new Republican party, too, was now 
attaining huge proportions ; and the result was, 
the balloting for governor was so close that from 
the middle of November to the middle of Decem- 



240 - ILAJ^SJOW AM) TJIK BALANCE:' 

bcr tlie })Coplc were in a state of unquiet, not 
knowinir wliether Pjarstow liad been returned or 
whether he liad been supplanted by his Republican 
opponent, Coles I^ashford, a Winnebago County 
lawyer. 

The State board of canvassers consisted of the 
secretary of state, the state treasurer and the 
attorney-general, all of them warm supporters of 
Barstow. On the fifteenth of December, the board 
canvassed the returns and reported that Barstow 
had received 36,355 votes, and Bashford 36,198, 
leaving Barstow a majority of 157. Bashford's 
friends at once claimed that the original returns 
from the various counties showed different figures, 
and that the State canvassers had forged a number 
of supplemental county returns, pretending to re- 
ceive them in Madison upon the fourteenth of 
December, the day before the official canvass. 
There was much popular disquiet over the alleged 
frauds, and the Republican leaders at once pre])ared 
for a contest. 

The seventh of January, 1856, was inauguration 
day. Barstow took the oath of oflfice amid the 
pomp of civic and military display, and remained 
in possession of the executive chamber. Bashford, 
stepping into the room of the State supreme court, 
was quietly sworn in by Chief-Justice Whiton. 
The supreme coin-t was at once called upon by 



'^ BAR Slow AND THE BALANCED 24 1 

Bashford, in a qiio warranto suit, to oust the incum- 
bent and give the office of governor to the relator. 
Thus commenced the most celebrated case ever 
tried by the Wisconsin supreme bench.* 

This was the first time in the history of the 
United States that a State court had been called 
upon to decide as to the right of a governor to 
hold his seat. Barstow's counsel at once ques- 
tioned its jurisdiction, claiming that it would be 
a dangerous precedent for one of the three co-ordi- 
nate branches of government to decide upon the 
eligibility of another; that, this right admitted, the 
judiciary would be elevated above the people and 
none but the creatures of the court would be 
allowed to hold office. The contest waged fiercely 
for some weeks, the court at last holding that it 
had jurisdiction. The counsel for Bashford man- 
aged his case shrewdly ; they won on nearly every 
motion made by them, and gradually cornered Bar- 
stow until on the eighth of March, the latter and his 
counsel withdrew from the case, protesting against 
the rulings of the judges, which they declared to 
be actuated by political considerations. 

But the withdrawal of Barstow did not prevent 

* The court consisted of Edward V. Whiton, chief justice, and Abram D. Smith and 
Orsamus Cole, associate justices. Bashford's counsel were Timothy O. Howe, Edward G. 
Ryan, James H. Knowlton and Alexander W. Randall. Counsel employed for Barstow were 
Jonathan E. Arnold, Harlow S. Orton and ^fatthew H. Carpenter. All of these gentlemen, 
judges and lawyers, were men of high distinction in their profession. It is a notable fact, that 
but two of them are now (1S90) living — Cole and Orton, the former the present chief-justice 
of the State supreme court, and the lattor one of the associate justices. 



242 - BARSrOW AND THE BALANCE:' 

the court proceeding with its inquiry. It went be- 
hind the certificate of tlie State canvassers, and 
investigated into the legality of the election re- 
turns. Here, gross irregularities were found, and 
as a result of the investigation, 761 votes were 
deducted by the court from Barstow's total, and 
405 added to Bashford's. The re-canvass gave 
Bashford 1,009 majority, and in accordance with 
this finding it was adjudged on the twenty- 
fourth of March that Bashford was the rightful 
o[overnor. 

Meanwhile, a new complication had arisen. Fore- 
seeing the result, Barstow, in spite of his threat 
not to "give up his ofifice alive," had, on the twen- 
ty-first of March, sent in his resignation to the legis- 
lature, and Arthur McArthur, who had been elected 
as lieutenant-governor, became governor by virtue 
of the constitution. McArthur defiantly announced 
his determination to hold the fort at all hazards for 
the balance of the gubernatorial term. His theory 
was, that having unquestionably been chosen lieu- 
tenant-governor, and having assumed the executive 
chair upon the resignation of Governor Barstow, 
his own right to the successorship was incontest- 
able. But the court promptly ruled that McArthur 
could gain no rights except through Barstow ; and 
Barstow's title being worthless, McArthur could 
not succeed to it. This view of the case had 



''BAR STOW AND THE BALANCE:' 



24. 



apparently not occurred to the Barstow people, 
and its annunciation greatly angered them. 

Throughout this long contest, it may be well 
imagined that popular excitement in and around 
Madison ran increasingly high. Parties of men 
representing both relator and respondent made no 

















J0)Z 



THE STATE CAPITAL AT MADISON. 



secret of the fact that they were armed and were 
drilling, in anticipation of a desperate encounter. 
It would have taken but small provocation to ignite 
this tinder box, but the management on both sides 
was judicious, and although the partisan bands had 
frequent wordy quarrels and there were numerous 



244 " />.iA\syoir .LV/) the nAL.ixcKr 

and vigorous threats of violence, tliere was no ap- 
proach to blows. The stubborn attitude of ]\Ic- 
Arthur was calculated to overstrain the relations 
between the opposing factors among the people, 
and towards the last it seemed as though it would 
be impossible to avoid trouble, when the crisis 
came. 

The court rendered its decision on Monday, the 
twenty-fourth of March, It was announced that 
Bashford would take possession of the governor's 
ofiftce upon Tuesday. Early in the appointed day, 
people began to gather in the vicinity of the capi- 
tol, coming in from the neighboring country in a 
circuit of ten miles, as they would flock to a trav- 
eling circus. By nine o'clock in the morning, the 
State house was crowded with citizens, principally 
the adherents of Bashford, and there was much 
ill-suppressed passion. At eleven o'clock, Bash- 
ford with a number of his friends proceeded to the 
Supreme court room, in the capitol. Upon emerg- 
ing, accompanied by the Dane County sheriff with 
the court's judgment in hand, the governor made 
his way through the crowded corridors to the ex- 
ecutive chamber, encouraged by friendly cheers. 

At the chamber, Bashford and his escort rapped 
and were bidden to enter. Inside, were McArthur, 
his jDrivate secretary and several friends. The gov- 
ernor, who was a portly, pleasant-looking gentle- 



'' BARSTOW AND THE BALANCE." 245 

man of the old school, leisurely took oif his top- 
coat, hung it and his hat in the wardrobe, and 
blandly informed McArthur that he had come to 
take the helm of State. The incumbent indis:- 
nantly inquired whether force was to be used in 
supporting the mandate of the court ; whereupon 
the new-comer coolly replied that he " presumed 
no force would be essential, but in case any was 
needed there would be no hesitation whatever, with 
the sheriff's help, in applying it." McArthur, at 
once calminof down, declared that he " considered 
this threat as constructive force," and would at 
once leave. As he hurried out of the door with 
his secretary and adherents, they passed between 
rows of Bashford's friends who were o-uardins: the 
portal and the corridor without. There was a shout 
of triumph, and in a few minutes Governor Bash- 
ford was receiving the congratulations of the 
crowd. 

The newly-installed executive met with no fur- 
ther resistance from " Barstow and the Balance," 
but in the legislature there was at first some oppo- 
sition. The senate received Bashford's opening 
message with enthusiasm and at once passed a 
congratulatory vote. The assembly at first re- 
fused, thirty-eight to thirty-four, to hold communi- 
cation with the governor ; but, finally, thirty of 
the Democratic members withdrew, after filing a 



246 '' BARSTOW AM) TJiE BALANCEr 

protest, and the assembly then agreed, thirty-seven 
to nine, to recognize the new official. The system 
of government by the people, had safely passed 
through a trying ordeal ; popular passions soon 
subsided and the fear of civil war in Wisconsin 
was at an end. 



CHAPTER IX. 



SPOTS ON THE ESCUTCHEON. 




HE Fugitive Slave Act 
of 1850 had met with 
the same harsh oppo- 
sition in Wisconsin, 
that had greeted it 
in the other free 
States. Not being 
upon the direct road 
to Canada, there 
were few instances of 
bondsmen attempting to escape across its territory, 
and thus giving practical illustration of the iniquity 
of the slave system. Yet from the first there was 
a goodly band of abolitionists within the borders 
of Badgerdom, men and women of spirit and brain, 
who made their influence felt in many communi- 
ties. The previous year, in 1849, Isaac P. Walker, 
one of the representatives of the State in the 
United States senate, had introduced and voted 
for an amendment to the Congressional general 
appropriation bill, providing for a government in 

247 



24<S S/'OyS ox IH/i ESCLTCIIEOX. 

California and New INIcxico, wliicl'i did not con- 
tain a provision prohibiting slaver}' in that section. 
This action was directly contrary to the legisla- 
ture's wishes, expressed in instructions to the State 
delegation in Congress, adopted but a few weeks 
before. The legislature thereupon passed resolu- 
tions to the effect that Walker had " violated his 
pledges given before his election, outraged the 
feelings of the people and openly violated " his in- 
structions, and he was " hereby instructed to im- 
mediately resign his seat." The senator, however, 
did not resign.* 

It was not until 1854, that occasion was found 
to test the Fugitive Slave Act in Wisconsin. 
Joshua Glover, a runaway slave, was employed in 
a mill some four miles north of Racine, on the 
road to Milwaukee. On the night of the tenth of 
March, he was playing cards with three other men 
of his race, in a neighboring cabin. Between seven 
and eight o'clock, the game was interrupted by 
the sudden appearance on the scene of five white 
men, one of them a Missourian named Benammi 
S. Garland, and the others a United States deputy 
marshal from Milwaukee, with five assistants, two 
of the latter beinij: citizens of Racine. Garland 



• In 1866, the legislature demanclcd the resignation of United States Senator James R. 
r)oolittle, because he sustained President Johnson's veto of the civil rights and freedmen's 
bureau bills, and urged that the Southern States should at once be re-adn)itted to representa- 
tion in Congress. Doolittle paid no attention tu the demand, and finished his term. 



SrO'JS ON THE ESCUTCHEON. 249 

claimed to be the owner of Glover, and his official 
companions were there for the purpose of enforcing 
the Fugitive Slave Act by capturing the runaway. 
There was a desperate tussle, in which Glover was 
badly cut up, the inevitable result being that the 
poor negro was placed in irons, thrown into an 
open wagon, and carried off across country to Mil- 
waukee. The night was bitterly cold, and to add 
to his miseries the fugitive was frequently kicked 
and beaten on the way, by the brutish Missourian, 
who lost no opportunity of threatening him with 
more serious punishment upon his return to the 
old plantation. 

The slave-takers had at first headed for Racine 
with their prey, but upon reflection that there was 
a considerable abolition party there, turned around 
and drove northward towards Milwaukee, taking a 
roundabout tour in order to avoid the main hioh- 
way. It was early morning before they reached 
their destination, and the maltreated black man, 
now weak from loss of blood and stiffened in cold, 
was thrown into the county jail. A half-dozen 
hours later, a surgeon had the humanity to par- 
tially dress his wounds. 

The Wisconsin Free Democrat, a small news- 
paper in Milwaukee, was edited by Sherman M. 
Booth, a prominent local character in the ranks of 
the "Free-Soil" Democracy. An intense aboH- 



250 SJ'07'S OA' THE ESCUTCHEON. 

ti(M-iist, he was among the first to learn of the 
Glover affair, and by eleven o'clock that niorning 
was busily engaged in getting together a public 
indignation meeting. Riding up and down the 
streets upon a horse, he shouted : " Freemen, to 
the rescue ! " and distributed hand-bills turned out 
at his printing-office, giving the news and calling 
upon the people to assemble at the county court- 
house. 

Meanwhile there was great excitement in Racine, 
where the Free-Soilers had been informed of the 
arrest by one of the negroes present at the affair. 
It was supposed at first that the captors and their 
victim were hiding at Racine, and search-parties 
were sent out by authority of a public indignation 
meetine, to beat the town. When the news came 
from Milwaukee that Glover was in that city, the 
sheriff of Racine County summoned a posse. A 
lake steamer with about one hundred Racine peo- 
ple on board was soon en route to tlie scene of 
action, arriving in Milwaukee at five o'clock in the 
afternoon. 

Booth's meeting had been a great success. Gen. 
James H. Paine, Dr. E. B. Wolcott, Franklin J. 
Blair, Booth and other liberty men made impas- 
sioned speeches, and resolutions were adopted in- 
sisting on Glover's right to a writ of habeas eorpus 
and a trial by jury. A vigilance committee was a]> 



SFOTS ON 7 HE ESCUTCHEON. 25 1 

pointed to see that the negro was not spirited away. 
The writ, however, which was issued by a local 
judge, would be obeyed neither by the United 
States district judge, A. G. Miller, who had issued 
the warrant for Glover's arrest, nor by the Milwau- 
kee sheriff. Upon receiving this news, the crowd 
at the court house, now reinforced by the Racine 
delegation, became furious in spirit. Marching to 
the jail, inspired by the clang of the court house 
bell, the people demanded the prisoner. Upon be- 
ing refused by the United States deputy marshal 
in charge, they at once attacked the weak structure 
with axes, beams and crow-bars, rescued Glover just 
at sunset and sent him off in haste to the neigh- 
boring village of Waukesha, where his wounds 
were properly attended to. The poor fellow was 
soon back in Racine and shortly after was enabled 
to escape to the free soil of Canada. 

Booth was promptly arrested for aiding in the 
escape of a fugitive slave, but the State supreme 
court discharged him on a writ of habeas covpiis. 
He was thereupon indicted in the United States 
district court in July, but the supreme court of the 
State again interfered in his favor. The first time, 
the decision of Chief Justice Whiton was, that the 
Fugitive Slave Act was " unconstitutional and 
void " inasmuch as it conferred judicial powers on 
court commissioners, and deprived the alleged 



252 S/'O'JS ox UIE ESCU'J'CHKON. 

fugitive of tlic right of trial by jury ; the second 
decision was, that the warrant of arrest was 
irresfular. 

The language adopted by the chief justice in his 
first decision, was severe. Mr. Justice Smith, in 
his concurring opinion, held, in much stronger 
terms, that the act of Congress was unconstitu- 
tional for the reason that "Congress has no consti- 
tutional power to legislate upon that subject." In 
speaking of the attempted enforcement of the act 
by United States marshals, independent of the 
State courts, he said — and it is instructive to read 
his words in connection with Wisconsin's previous 
attitude on the question of State sovereignty 
during the boundary dispute: 

" Every day's experience ought to satisfy all that 
the States never wnll quietly submit to be disrobed 
of their sovereignty ; submit to the humiliation of 
having the execution of this compact forced upon 
them, or rather taken out of their hands by national 
functionaries ; and that, too, on the axowed ground 
that they are so utterly wanting in integrity and 
good faith that it can be executed in no other way. 
On the contrary, if the federal government would 
abstain from interference, the States would ade- 
quately fulfill all their duties in the premises, and 
peace and order would be restored. 

" But they will never consent that a slave-owner, 



SPOTS ON THE ESCUTCHEON. 253 



his ao-ent or an officer of the United States, armed 
with process to arrest a fugitive from service, is 
clothed with entire immunity from State author- 
ity ; to commit whatever crime or outrage against 
the laws of the State, that their own high preroga- 
tive writ of habeas corpus shall be annulled, their 
authority defied, their officers resisted, the process 
of their own courts contemned, their territory in- 
vaded by federal force, the houses of their citizens 
searched, the sanctuary of their homes invaded, 
their streets and public places made the scene of 
tumultuous and armed violence, and State sover- 
eignty succumb, paralyzed and aghast, before the 
process of an officer unknown to the constitution, 
and irresponsible to its sanctions. At least, such 
shall not become the degradation of Wisconsin, 
without meeting as stern remonstrance and resist- 
ance as I may be able to interpose, so long as her 
people impose upon me the duty of guarding their 
rights and liberties, and of maintaining the dignity 
and sovereignty of their State." 

The United States supreme court, however, re- 
versed the action of the State court, and Booth was 
re-arrested in i860, being soon pardoned by the 
President. As for Garland, he was arrested in 
Racine for assault and battery, but was released on 
a writ of habeas corpus issued by Judge Miller at 
Milwaukee, and hurried home, from whence he 



254 SJ'O'JS OA THE ESCLTCHEOX. 

entered unsuccessful suits against several citizens 
of Racine for aiding in Glover's escape. The 
Racine men who helped him in the assault on the 
slave, were made to suffer in many ways by their 
indignant fellow-townsmen, and that city became a 
fiercer hot-bed of abolition than ever. Several 
times after the Glover episode, its people were 
engaged in assisting slaves to escape on the " under- 
ground railroad," but fortunately had no further 
occasion to take the law into their own hands in 
the defense of human liberty. 

In 1857, as a result of the Glover affair, the 
legislature passed an act " to prevent kidnapping," 
by making it the duty of district attorneys in each 
county " to use all lawful means to protect, defend, 
and procure to be discharged . . . every per- 
son arrested or claimed as a fugitive slave," and 
throwing around the poor bondsman every possible 
safeo'uard. This was Wisconsin's protest against 
the iniquity of the Fugitive Slave Act. 

The Fox and Wisconsin River improvement 
enterprise was an important element in legislation 
for many years. We have seen how useful and 
necessary to the early French explorers was this 
natural highway connecting the waters of the Great 
Lakes with those of the Mississippi. These two 
streams — the waters of the one being eventually 
mingled with the Atlantic, in the Gulf of St. Law- 



Sr07S ON THE ESCUTCHEOX. 255 

rence, and the waters of the other pouring into the 
far-distant Gulf of Mexico — approach each other 
in the heart of Wisconsin, a boggy plain but a mile 
and a half in width separating them at the present 
city of Portage. The early means for transporta- 
tion across this little neck of land were ample 
enough in the primitive da^s of the missionary, the 
fur-trader and the frontier soldier. But with the 
larger transactions incident to the increase of popu- 
lation, the necessity for portage became a serious 
drawback to commercial enterprise along these 
waterways. 

The first American settlers at Green Bay saw 
this, and as early as October, 1829, a meeting was 
held there, and resolutions were adopted asking 
Congress to dig a canal across the plain, so that 
heavily-laden boats could readily pass from one 
river to the other at all seasons. It has already 
been pointed out that in exceptionally wet periods, 
the plain was wont to be flooded, so that water 
from the Wisconsin flowed over into the Fox, and 
canoes could make the through trip without unlad- 
ing. Indeed, this very feat had been accomplished 
in 1828, by the Fifth Regiment of United States 
infantry, which proceeded from St. Louis to Green 
Bay without once necessarily getting out of their 
Durham boats — a fact which had suggested the 
public meeting alluded to. 



256 s/vrs o.y the escltciieon. 

I>ut Congress did notliing at the time. In 1S39, 
however, the enterprise began to niovc. That sea- 
son a government engineer investigated the project 
of improving both the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers 
so as to admit of regular traffic for large boats, and 
of uniting them by canal. Seven years later, Con- 
gress made a irrant of land to Wisconsin to aid in 
forwarding the canal and the Fox River improve- 
ment alone — this grant covering every odd-num- 
bered section within three miles of the canal, the 
river and the intervening lakes, en route from Port- 
age to Green Bay, a distance by water of one hun- 
dred and seventy-five miles. On the eighth of 
August, 1848, the new State appointed a board of 
})ublic works for carrying the scheme into effect. 
But the board soon ran the undertaking into debt and 
was obliged to report to the legislature, in January, 
185 I, that the work would have to stop on account 
of the slow sales of land. One of the chief sources 
of trouble was, that members of the board allowed 
themselves to be influenced by legislators, each of 
whom wanted a portion of the money spent in his 
district without regard to the common need ; this 
course had well-nigh bankrupted the enterj^rise; 

At this critical juncture, an enter])ri>ing and 
public-spirited citizen of Green Bay, Morgan L. 
Martin, offered to do the work from Green Ixiy to 
Lake Winnebago, except what was already done 



SPOTS ON THE ESCUTCHEON. 259 

or contracted for — the canal at Portage having 
already been dug. 

Upon the acceptance by the legislature, of this 
proposition, Martin commenced his task with a 
large force of men, being given State scrip as the 
undertaking progressed, to be redeemed from the 
sale of lands and from the tolls on the work. This 
was in 185 1, the last year of Governor Dewey's term. 
But in January following, Leonard J. Farwell be- 
came the chief executive, and he hastened to inform 
the legislature that the Martin contract was uncon- 
stitutional, at the same time declining to pay over 
an instalment of scrip already earned. The legis- 
lature ordered otherwise, and the governor was 
finally compelled to yield. 

In the early months of 1853, in order to relieve 
the State from any implied obligation in the affair, 
the Fox and Wisconsin Improvement Company 
was organized by Martin, and to it was transferred 
the entire work. The Improvement Company went 
on with its operations until 1856, when the first boat, 
the Aquila, passed through the works, en route 
from Pittsburg to Green Bay, and soon thereafter 
several steamboats made regular trips along the 
lower reaches of the river. In 1854-55, Congress 
increased the land grant to the company, so that 
the entire gift was now estimated at nearly seven 
hundred thousand acres. At the same time 



26o SrOTS ON THE ESCUTCHEON. 

the legislature, after several years of wrangling, 
authorized an increase of stock to two hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars. But it now became neces- 
sary to seek outside capital in order to floats© large 
an enterprise. Several New Yorkers, among whom 
were Horatio Seymour, Erastus Corning and Hiram 
Barney, bought into the company and were soon 
its leading spirits. In 1866 the institution was 
foreclosed, the New York capitalists became the 
owners, and the corporate title was changed to the 
Green Bay and Mississippi Canal Company. They 
enoacred the services of oovernment ens^ineers, and 
in October, 1872, sold the plant to the United 
States. Three-cornered lawsuits between the gov- 
ernment, the New York men and Martin were upon 
the calendars of the Wisconsin courts for many 
years after this transfer, and were never satisfacto- 
rily adjusted. 

The Fox-Wisconsin improvement has cost the 
State and the nation millions of dollars, but has 
never been a complete success. The Lower Fox 
has, by means of an elaborate system of locks, been 
made navigable for boats of a few feet draught, 
between Green Bay and Omro ; but the traffic is 
slight, the chief advantage accruing to the thrifty 
manufacturing towns of Neenah, Menasha, Apple- 
ton, Kaukauna and Depere, where splendid water- 
powers have been incidently developed by the gov- 



SPOTS ON THE ESCUTCHEON. 26 1 

ernment works. From Omro to Portage there 
is a slight, spasmodic freight traffic for small flat- 
bottomed steamers of not over three feet draucrht. 
The canal at Portage, fast falling into decay, is 
sometimes not opened throughout an entire season. 
The Wisconsin River is clogged with shifting sand- 
bars and wholly unreliable for vessels of three-feet 
draught, except in high water. It is seldom used, 
now that logging on the Upper Wisconsin has been 
greatly reduced in extent ; and a government engi- 
neer has made 'the assertion that the only way to 
" improve " it for a national waterway, is to " either 
lath-and-plaster the bottom or construct a canal 
alongside, all the way from Portage to Prairie du 
Chien." 

In early days, there was no doubt whatever in the 
minds of the Wisconsin public, that this projected 
improvement, apparently so feasible, could be easily 
constructed and the historic streams be made 
to bear monster war and freight vessels through the 
heart of the State, between the Great Lakes and 
the great river artery of the continent; but it is 
now the general opinion that the difficulties in the 
way are too great to be overcome, chiefly owing to 
the peculiar character of the Wisconsin River, and 
" improvement talk," so common a dozen or more 
years ago, is now no longer heard in our legisla- 
tures and political conventions. 



262 SJ'Ol'S ON THE ESCUTCHEON. 

There were several railway companies chartered 
in Wisconsin in Territorial days,* but the Milwau- 
kee &: Waukesha was the only one of these that 
materialized; for, although there was always en- 
ergy enough in this backwoods commonwealth, 
there was for many years a scarcity of money. The 
men who built Wisconsin came West to earn their 
fortunes and had not yet won them. The charter 
for the Milwaukee & Waukesha had been granted 
by the legislature early in 1847. Subscription 
books were opened in February of the following 
year. A year later the name was changed to the 
Milwaukee &: Mississippi, and in 185 1 the rails 
were actually laid and a train run from Milwaukee 
to Waukesha, a distance of twenty miles. This 
was the pioneer Wisconsin railway, and there was 
great popular rejoicing over an accomplishment 
which was to prove to the world that the Badger 
State proposed to be a progressive community. 
Three years after, the iron way had reached the 
capital, and in 1856 the Mississippi River. Thus 
the proposed span was complete, the State being 
now crossed from Milwaukee to Prairie du Chien 
by what came in after years to be the great Chi- 
cago, Milwaukee & St. Paul. 

Meanwhile other lines were pushing out. The 



•A public mectiiiR was held in Milwaukee as early as 1836, to ask the legislature to grant 
a charter for a railway from Milwaukee to I'rairie du Chien. 



SJO'JS OA' THE ESCUTCHEON. 26 



o 



then infant Chicago & Northwestern had pene- 
trated the State, reaching Janesville from the 
southeast in 1855, and Fond du Lac in 1858. 
Many were the short local spurs, built between 
this period and the outbreak of the Rebellion, 
which were finally absorbed, extended and ramified 
by the larger companies. After the close of the 
war, there was a revival of railway enterprises, 
which has, with its ups and downs, lasted into our 
own day, until now there are few States in the 
Union better provided with roads of steel than 
Wisconsin, in proportion to population. At the 
close of the year 1889, the railway commissioner 
reported 5,390 miles of track within the State, of 
which the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul operated 
1,310, the Chicago & Northwestern 946, and the 
Wisconsin Central 641. 

To aid in the construction of railways in Wis- 
consin, Congress made two liberal grants of land, 
in June, 1856. One was for the building of a line 
from either Madison or Columbus, via Portage City 
and St. Croix River, to Bayfield on the shores of 
Lake Superior; and the other for a line stretching 
northward from Fond du Lac to somewhere on the 
Michigan State line. " Every alternate section of 
land designated by odd numbers for six sections in 
width, on each side of said roads respectively," 
was to be given to the companies constructing 



264 SJ'OJS ox THE ESCUTCJJJ.OX. 

Ihcni. In tlic fall of that year the legislature 
accepted these grants froni the general govern- 
ment, and immediately there began a wild struggle 
among the railroad men to capture the prizes. 
The law-makers, with a show of impartiality, decided 
not to give th:.' lands thus acquired from Congress 
to any of the corporations already organized, but 
to charter two new companies, one for each of the 
contemplated lines. The grant for the road to 
Lake Superior was finally voted to a corpora- 
tion styled the La Crosse & Milwaukee Railroad 
Company, called into being by special legislative 
act. The orant for the road to run out of Fond 
du Lac, was given to another specially-created 
corporation entitled the Wisconsin & Superior 
Railroad Company. \\\ popular estimation, these 
companies were new in name only, for what came 
to be known as the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. 
Paul was alleged to be at the back of the one, and 
what grew into the Chicago & Northwestern was 
said to be the flesh and blood of the other. It was 
not long after the passage of the act, before the 
grantees were "absorbed" by the old corporations; 
but it was many years before the contemplated 
lines were completed, and grave legal complications 
afterwards arose as to the rightful ownership of 
the grants. 

This disposal of the land grants b}' the legisla- 



SFOl'S ON THE ESCUTCHEON. 265 

ture of 1S56, gave rise to popular charges of cor- 
ruption, especially in relation to the La Crosse & 
Milwaukee deal. At the session of 1858, the 
matter was investigated by a special joint com- 
mittee, which made a report to the effect that " The 
manaorers of the La Crosse & Milwaukee Rail- 
road Company have been guilty of numerous and 
unparalleled acts of mismanagement, gross viola- 
tions of duty, fraud and plunder." The investiga- 
tors also reported that the legislature of 1856 had 
been bribed by wholesale ; that thirteen of the 
seventeen senators who voted for the errant to this 
company had received from ten thousand to 
twenty thousand dollars in either stock or bonds, 
at par, while fifty-eight of the sixty-two affirma- 
tive assemblymen had received from five-thousand 
to ten thousand dollars each in the same paper. 
As to the o-Qvernor then in ofiice, Coles Bashford 
— whose bitter struggle with Barstow has already 
been alluded to — the committee did not hesitate 
to affirm that he, too, had been " propitiated " by 
fifty thousand dollars' worth of bonds, in considera- 
tion of his official approval of the act ; that three 
other State officers had received, as hush money, 
ten thousand dollars each, and the governor's 
private secretary five thousand dollars. 

The report of the committee created intense in- 
dio^nation throuijliout Wisconsin, while the amount 



266 SJ'OTS ON THE ESCUTCHEON. 

of advertising which tlic State obtained in con- 
sequence, in the Eastern press, was not of a 
character calculated to help it in popular estima- 
tion. It is proper to chronicle that several of the 
alleged beneficiaries of this railroad bribery after- 
wards strenuously denied that they had received 
compensation for their official acts. Governor 
Bashford soon removed from Wisconsin into the 
Far West, common report having it that he had 
been shrewd enough to cash the greater portion of 
his bonds at once ; whereas those who kept their 
ill-gotten paper failed to realize upon it, for the 
La Crosse & Milwaukee Railroad Company never 
materialized, and its promises to pay w^re soon as 
valueless as soap-bubbles. 

Still another jDolitical scandal smirched the rec- 
ord of the first decade of Wisconsin's Statehood. 
For several years, while " Barstow and the Balance " 
were in charge of public affairs, the air was laden 
with rumors of mismanagement of the State trust 
funds. At last, in September, 1856, the legislature 
appointed a special committee " to investigate the 
offices of the state treasurer, secretary of state, and 
school and university land commissioners from the 
commencement of the State government." This 
committee rendered an elaborate report, covering the 
period previous to the preceding January, to the ef- 
fect that almost hopeless confusion was found in the 



SPOTS 0.\ THE ESCUTCHEON. 267 

books of the treasurer and the land commissioners; 
that State officers had been allowed to freely take 
money out of the treasury in anticipation of their 
salaries, leaving only memorandum slips in the cash 
drawer, stating the amount withdrawn; that Treas- 
urer Janssen was a defaulter to the general fund, on 
the face of the records, to the extent of $31,318.54; 
that the school and State university trust funds had 
been recklessly loaned out on insufficient security 
to friends of the State officials — in short, that tens 
of thousands of dollars in these funds had in many 
ways been " lost and squandered " by the officials in 
charge. The persons thus implicated were chiefly 
the State officers under Barstow, and all except 
the treasurer at once sent in a reply to the legisla- 
ture, claiming that the investigation had been con- 
ducted with prejudice, and the condition of their 
accounts grossly exaggerated. As for the treas- 
urer, it was shown that his assistant was really to 
blame for all irregularities, but the deficiency re- 
mains to this day unsettled on the books of his 
department. Nothing further was done about the 
unfortunate affair, each party to the controversy 
over the trust funds claiming to have made an 
unanswerable statement. Certain it is, however, 
that these funds had by some means been sadly 
depleted, and for many years the educational system 
of the State greatly suffered in consequence. 



268 SrOTS ON THE ESCUTCHEON. 

Political passion ran surprisingly high in those 
first eight or ten years of the State's history. It 
entered into the every-day affairs of life. The man 
who was opposed to one's party, was an enemy to 
what was held next dearest to the family hearthstone. 
In fact, it was often doubted whether a citizen so 
recreant to his political trust could be strictly hon- 
est, whether he was worthy of either patronage 
in trade or social recognition. The newspapers of 
the day were conducted by partisans of prominence ; 
each editorial ofifice was the council chamber of 
a knot of political " workers," in which schemes 
were concocted for the subversion of the opposition 
cohorts, and the leader-writer communed with his 
backers regarding the policy of the journal in the 
pending " crisis of the country's history." In a 
time when the fellows on the other side of the 
party fence were dubbed and believed to be rascals, 
on general principles, it is perhaps not surprising 
that, when opportunity occurred, some of them in 
ofifice deemed it desirable to " have the game as 
well as the name," and took occasion to feather 
their nests. The commonwealth was in a forma- 
tive condition, the fever of speculation was rife, 
the state of political morals throughout the nation 
was just then none of the best, a baneful spirit of 
unrest was in the air. The atmosphere needed 
clearino-. It was tinie for political lines to be rc-ad- 



SFOl'S ON THE ESCUTCHEON. 269 

justed and a healthier tone introduced. The in- 
solence of the slave power finally made a clear- 
cut national issue. With the introduction of a 
distinctly moral element into political discussion, 
the quality of public service was noticeably im- 
proved in this as in many other commonwealths of 
the North. And this higher tone has since pre- 
vailed. It is not at all likely that the scandals of 
the early fifties will ever be repeated in Wisconsin, 
whose public affairs are to-day conducted on a broad 
plane, with remarkable enlightenment and purity. 



CHAPTER X. 



WISCONSIN ON A WAR FOOTING. 




OVERNOR Alexan- 
der W. Randall * was 
entering upon his 
second term when 
he addressed the leg- 
islature at the open- 
ing of its thirteenth 
session, in January, 
i860, and proudly 
pointed to the fact 
that the finances of Wisconsin were never in 
such excellent condition ; that, unlike most new 
States, it had paid for all of its public improvements, 
yet had not contracted a permanent State debt ; 
that there was no floating debt whatever, and in- 
stead a handsome balance in the treasury. The 
outlook for Wisconsin was assuredly brilliant just 
then, so far as statistics showed. Her population 
that summer was found by the federal census to be 
775,88 1 , exhibiting a handsome percentage of growth 



* Afterwards postmasler-KL' 



ral in JdIiiisoh's cabinet. 
270 



IVISCONSIN ON A WAR FOOTING. 27 1 

during the decade ; banks were thriving, commerce 
was in a healthy condition, the educational system 
had at last been placed upon a good footing, most 
of the State institutions were now somethinsf to be 
proud of, and the arts of industry were everywhere 
being cultivated with profit. 

But the governor as well as many other thought- 
ful citizens of the commonwealth, knew that these 
fair conditions carried with them but slight hope 
for long continuance, for the oncoming war cloud 
was even then visible on the political horizon to 
those who could read the sio;ns of the times. As 
the year sped on, the insurrectionary aims of the 
slaveholders became more and more apparent. The 
result of the general election in November was 
practically an announcement to the South upon the 
part of the North, that come what might the slave 
power was doomed. Wisconsin contributed her 
full share to this verdict, for out of a total vote of 
152,180 the Lincoln electors were chosen by a 
majority of 21,089 over the Douglas men. 

The entire staff of State officials were republican, 
and the new legislature was overwhelmingly of the 
same party. A strong Union spirit pervaded every 
department of the State government, and the gov- 
ernor's message to the two houses, on the tenth of 
January, 1861, echoed popular sentiment in a ring- 
ing, if somewhat stilted, denunciation of the seccs- 



2/2 IVJSCOXSnV ON A WAR FOOTING. 

sion idea. "Wisconsin is true," he said, " and her 
people steadfast. She will not destroy the Union 
nor consent that it shall be done. Devised by 
great and wise and good men in days of sore trial, 
it must stand. Like some bold mountain at whose 
base the great seas break their angry floods, around 
whose summit the thunders of a thousand hurri- 
canes have rattled, strong, unmoved, immovable, so 
mav our Union be, while treason surges at its base 
and passions rage around it. Unmoved, immovable 
let it stand forever ! " 

The legislature fully appreciated the gravity of 
the situation. Quite regardless of party ties, acts 
were passed early in the session providing for 
the defense of the State, and authorizing the gov- 
ernor, in case war should be declared, to at once 
cooperate with the national authorities in preserv- 
ing the integrity of the Union. The governor was 
given carte blaiiclie in fact, in the adoption of such 
measures as should seem appropriate to so great an 
emergency, should the anticipated insurrection 
break out during the vacation of the legislature. 
The sum of two hundred thousand dollars was 
voted, contingent on such an event, for the fitting 
of volunteers. These precautionary proceedings 
were sustained with enthusiasm by the greater por- 
tion of the people and press of the State, regardless 
of party afifiliations. 



WISCONSIN ON A WAR FOOTING. 



■^/3 



On the eighteenth of February occurred what 
has been called" the first victory of the Rebellion." 
Gen. David E. Twiggs, in command of the depart- 
ment of Texas, that day formally surrendered to 
the Confederacy, at San Antonio, all of the United 
States army property in his care, amounting to a 
million and a quarter dollars. Nineteen posts were 
delivered up, with a vast quantity of military stores, 
and over two thousand government troops were re- 
moved on parole. This shameful betrayal of trust 
caused intense indignation throughout all the loyal 
States, but Wisconsin pioneers had reason to be 
particularly outspoken. Twiggs, as. major of the 
Fifth U. S. infantry, had for several years com- 
manded in Wisconsin, first at Fort Howard and then 
at Fort Winnebago, and was well known throughout 
the Northwest. In 1828 he built Fort Win- 
nebago, one of his lieutenants being Jefferson 
Davis, then just graduated from West Point. 
During his residence in Wisconsin, Twiggs had 
come to be generally regarded as domineering, 
cruel and mercenary, leaving behind him an un- 
savory reputation, which his acknowledged bravery 
in the Mexican War in after years had done but 
little to efface. Neither had Davis acquired any 
friends at the frontier posts, while serving under 
Twiggs. The spectacle of these two Wisconsin 
military pioneers betraying the cause of the Union 



2 74 IV J SCONS IN OA A IVAJ^ J' 00 77 AG. 

liad an especially melancholy interest for Wiscon- 
sin men. Had Twiggs not played traitor and thus 
giv^en a local impetus to the cause of the secession- 
ists, it is now thou£>:ht that Texas would have de- 
clined to withdraw from the Union ; and without 
Texas it is doubtful if the Confederacy could have 
long: held toQ:ether. 

After making all the preparations then consid- 
ered necessary, the legislature adjourned upon Wed- 
nesday, iApril seventeenth. The last few days of 
the session had been exciting enough. Sunday 
morning, I""ort Sumter fell. Monday, President Lin- 
coln issued his call for seventy-five thousand three- 
months' volunteers to aid in executing the national 
laws in the seceding States. Tuesday, Governor 
Randall issued a proclamation in which he urged a 
prompt response upon the part of Wisconsin, say- 
ing that one regiment was the quota of the State, 
and giving the first opportunity for enlistment to 
existing militia organizations. On the ninth of 
January, the Madison Guard, a local militia com- 
pany, had tendered its services to the governor " in 
case those services might be required for the pres- 
ervation of the American Union." The company- 
was highly complimented for its promptness, at the 
time, and when the governor had signed his procla- 
mation, on the sixteenth of April, he at once sent 
word to the captain, accepting the tender. Thus 



WJSCONSIN ON A WAR FOOTING. 275 

this or2:anization was the first to enlist in Wiscon- 
sin. The legislature adjourned on Wednesday 
noon, and a public meeting, in which democrats as 
freely joined as republicans, was at once held in the 
chamber of the lower house. Patriotic songs were 
sung by the members, employes, lobbyists and 
citizens generally, loyal words were spoken, the 
governor was heartily cheered, and an enthusiastic 
round of " three times three " was given to the gal- 
lant little band which had first responded to the 
call for help. The Governor's Guard, another 
Madison company, had by this time also offered its 
services, and while the meeting was yet in progress 
the telegraph lines were crowded with similar offers 
of help from Milwaukee and other cities through- 
out the State. 

News of the coming fray came in thick and fast, 
now. The following day, the Virginia convention 
resolved to cast the fortunes of the Old Dominion 
with the Confederacy. One by one most of the 
other slave States wheeled into line under the 
banner of secession. On the nineteenth of April 
occurred the Baltimore riots and the first shedding 
of blood. On the twenty-second, the First Wiscon- 
sin regiment of eight hundred men, chiefly a com- 
bination of the old militia companies recruited up 
to the standard, was thoroughly organized, and the 
War Department in Washington notified to that 



2/6 IVJSCONS/N ON A WAR lOOTJNG. 

effect. The soldiers went into camp at Milwaukee 
on the twenty-seventh, and upon the seventeenth of 
May were mustered into the United States service 
for three months. 

So intense was the war spirit throughout the 
State, that Governor Randall soon had an embar- 
rassment of riches on his hands. Within seven 
days after his proclamation was issued, thirty-six 
comi)anics had volunteered. The governor, anx- 
ious that the commonwealth should be well rep- 
resented in the field, asked the War Department 
for permission to raise more regiments, complain- 
ing that Illinois, with not quite double the popula- 
tion of Wisconsin, had been asked for six regi- 
ments. But the general government had not yet 
come to a just appreciation of the scope of its giant 
undertaking; Secretary of War Cameron replied 
that one reeiment was all that was needed from 
Wisconsin, suggesting that any enlistments beyond 
this force be cancelled. The energetic governor, 
however, was not disposed to act on this advice, and 
set about grouping his surplus companies into re- 
serve recfiments, declarins^ his confidence that thev 
would be needed soon. And thus were the Second, 
Third and Fourth regiments organized and ready 
to rendezvous in camp, before the government had 
expressed a desire for them. 

The people of the North were not skilled in the 



WISCONSIN ON A WAR FOOTING. 277 

arts of war, in those early days of the Rebelh'on. 
There had been a long period of peace and but 
few had meanwhile dreamed that the national life 
would again be in peril. The far-scattered militia 
companies were maintained for holiday display, and 
were but toy organizations compared with the 
sturdy, well-equipped National Guard of the pres- 
ent. The sudden outburst of 1861 found our 
people ill prepared for carrying on a great strug- 
gle like this. There was no lack of patriotism, no 
lack of willingness, and at first no lack of men or 
funds. But there was no organization. Confusion 
was universal. Every one seemed to be mak- 
ing false movements and the leaders were work- 
ing at cross-purposes. There was an insufficiency 
of stores, of clothing, food and military equipage ; 
the early regiments went to the front with oddly- 
shaped garments in all shades of gray, often 
were obliged to wait weeks and months for their 
arms, and frequently suffered from bad management 
in the commissariat. Wisconsin troops had their 
share of such experiences, despite the efforts of the 
hard-working governor, who labored heroically for 
the cause in which his heart was wrapped. He 
sent agents to Washington to gather information 
relative to the proper handling and outfitting of his 
volunteers, issued frequent proclamations to the 
people of the State informing them of the situation 



278 JV/SCOyS/N ON A WAR FOOTLXG. 

of affairs, organized the women in their noble work 
of aiding the army, inspired public meetings by 
patriotic addresses, personally sujDervised the de- 
tails of management, and conducted an extensive 
correspondence with the national authorities and 
his fellow State executives; he attended and ad- 
dressed a conference of governors of Western and 
border States held in Cleveland on the third of May, 
being selected to lay before the President the con- 
clusions of that important conference. 

It was on this same third of May that Lin- 
coln issued his second call for \olunteers, now de- 
siring fnrtv-two thousand for three years. Wis- 
consin's quota under this levy was two regiments. 
As there were enough companies on the rolls 
for ten, Randall again strenuously insisted on being- 
given the ])rivilege to send more. Secretary Came- 
ron was firm, how'ever, and so only the Second and 
Third regiments were mustered in for three years 
and handed over to the Government for service. 
Bull Run convinced the authorities at Wash- 
ington that the war was a serious thing, and it was 
not long before calls for more troops were plentiful. 
The First (three-months' men), which had been 
sent to Harrisburg, Pa., in June, and had had a brief, 
sharp brush with the enemy at Falling XWiters, was 
reorganized as a three-years' regiment in .August. 
By the close of the year, fifteen regiments of infan- 



WISCONSIN ON A WAR FOOTING. 281 

try had been formed within the State, at the cen- 
tral camps in Milwaukee, Madison, Fond du Lac 
and Racine, while five more were being raised; 
besides these, were two regiments of cavalry, a 
number of sharpshooters and seven batteries of 
artillery. Wisconsin's quota had been placed at 
twenty thousand, but she had thus far exceeded that 
number by over three thousand. 

On the ninth of May, the governor issued a call 
for a special session of the legislature, which con- 
vened on the fifteenth and continued for twelve 
days, during which vigorous measures were adopted 
pertaining to the military exigencies of the hour. 
From this time forward, the Wisconsin legislature 
could always be relied upon to advance the inter- 
ests of the Union by prompt and liberal appropri- 
ations. The most rigid economy was forced in 
every department of the State government, but 
there was ever money enough to aid in the prose- 
cution of the war, and the State's quota of troops 
was always more than full. 

It was not without a desperate struggle that 
the financial situation was maintained unimpaired. 
The day that Sumter had been fired upon, the Wis- 
consin bank circulation amounted to some fovn* 
millions of dollars, over one half of which was 
secured by the bonds of either Southern or border 
States The outbreak of the war, though the 



282 ivj:scoasjn on a wa/< j ootjng. 

trouble was at first thought to be but temporary, at 
once sent these securities far below par, and disaster 
stared the bankers in the face. The bank comp- 
troller was powerless to stem the current, and the 
legislature hastened to adopt measures which were 
intended to postpone disaster. But in spite of 
oflficial assistance, within two weeks twenty-two 
banks had refused to redeem their bills and had 
been discredited. On the twenty-fifth of April, 
the bankers held a State convention, discredited 
eighteen more weak concerns, and agreed to receive 
the issues of seventy specified banks until the first 
of December following, when an amended banking 
law was to go into effect. Business, which had 
been nearly paralyzed, again revived and public 
confidence was apparently restored. But dissen- 
sions soon arose among the banks, the strong 
declining to any longer bolster up the weak. 
The Milwaukee bankers therefore met on the even- 
ing of Friday, June 21, and as a measure of self- 
preservation threw out ten banks from the list of 
seventy. The notice of this action was not pub- 
lished until after banking hours of Saturday, by 
which time the laborers of the city had generally 
been paid their week's wages. The workmen found 
that a considerable portion of the bills they had re- 
ceived were the issues of the ten discredited banks. 
Not understanding that a regard for the public wel- 



WISCONSIN ON A WAR FOOTING. 2S3 



fare had caused the heaving overboard of these 
financial Jonahs, the men considered themselves 
defrauded. On Monday morning an excited mob 
stormed the banks with bricks and paving stones. 
Mitchell's bank, the State Bank of Wisconsin and 
the brokers' offices received the worst injuries, the 
loss in furniture and windows amounting to about 
four thousand dollars. Business was suspended 
throughout the city during the entire week, and it 
was a month before the stream of commerce aoain 
flowed smoothly. The holders of the paper of the 
discredited banks were eventually reimbursed ; and 
by the close of the year an arrangement was made 
between the Milwaukee financiers and the State 
government, by which the worthless Southern bonds 
were sold and replaced by State bonds, and all bank- 
bills not previously retired from circulation were 
once more received at par. 

Public interest, however, was chiefly centered in 
the conduct of the civil war, and there was but 
little time for the consideration of any other form 
of business than that of the oricrantic strusforle for 
the perpetuity of the Union. Wisconsin troops 
soon gained an enviable reputation at the front, and 
maintained it throughout the war. The population 
of the State was of a mixed character, and the 
regiments contained many Germans, Scandinavi- 
ans, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Swiss and representatives 



284 IV/SCO.YS/N ON A JVAA' FOOTING. 

of other European nationalities, as well as native 
Americans. Some of the infantry regiments were 
almost wholl)' made up of foreigners — the Ninth, 
Twenty-sixth and Forty-fifth were German, almost 
to a man ; the Fifteenth was Scandinavian, and the 
Seventeenth Irish, There were a good many Wis- 
consin Indians in the Third, Seventh and Thirty- 
seventh ; and on the Oneida reservation at Keshena 
there is an Indian Post of the Grand Army of the 
Republic, the only one of the sort in the United 
States. The French of the State were largely 
represented in the Twelfth regiment. 

The foreign-born volunteers were, like the 
natives, generally intelligent, young, vigorous and 
of good physique. Wisconsin soldiers were fre- 
quently selected for positions of great danger and 
responsibility, for it was generally understood 
that they were apt to be men of exceptional 
endurance and nerve. The government's policy 
of making up the several brigades and divisions 
of men from widely-separated States was wise, 
as it tended to develop the national spirit and 
eradicate sectionalism. It was thus that Wisconsin's 
91,327 volunteers* came to be represented in every 
one of the great armies. They served in brigades 
with men from every loyal State, and met the enemy 

* The aveianc population of the State cliirin;; the war was 822,278, so that she was repre- 
sented ill the field by one nintli of her population ; if the presidential vote of 1864 is taken as 
a basis, over one half of her voters were in the war. 



WISCONSIN ON A WAR FOOTING. 285 

in every one of the seceded States save Florida ; 
some of them were in tlie Indian campaigns in 
Minnesota, Dakota and Indian Territory, and others 
patrolled the Rio Grande during the threatened in- 
vasion from Mexico. There was still another 
reason why Wisconsin regiments attained a special 
reputation for efficiency : not desirous like some 
States of multiplying the number of regiments, 
the custom was adopted of mingling the recruits 
with the veterans, that the former might sooner 
learn the art of war. Sherman, in his " Memoirs," 
pays this rare tribute to Wisconsin's method: "I 
remember that Wisconsin kept her regiments filled 
with recruits, whereas other States generally filled 
up their quotas by new regiments ; and the result 
was that we estimated a Wisconsin regiment equal 
to an ordinary brigade." 

Governor Randall, although setting out with no 
preliminary training in the management of enter- 
prises of this character, had made for himself 
before the close of the opening year of the war, a 
most enviable record. Imbued with a spirit of in- 
tense patriotism he went into his work with intelli- 
gent zeal, and soon evolving some sort of order out 
of chaos had placed the Wisconsin troops upon as 
excellent a footing as any of the regiments from 
the older and wealthier States. He had properly 
organized the war machinery of the commonwealth 



286 IVJSCOyS/N ON A JVAR FOOTING. 

and given it sucli an impetus, tliat his successor, 
Governor Harvey, who came into office in January, 
1862, had but to continue the direction upon the 
same general lines. Randall had not been a candi- 
date for reelection, otherwise the people of the 
State would have been glad to continue him at the 
head of affairs, despite the prevailing American 
prejudice against a third term for any chief execu- 
tive, State or national. 

Harvey, who was an energetic man and capa- 
ble of grasping the situation, was not destined to 
lonsf remain at the helm. Some of the Wisconsin 
regiments had been sadly thinned at the battle 
of Pittsburgh Landing, the seventh of April, and 
there was much suffering among the wounded. 
The great Sanitarv Commission was not then as 
perfectly organized as it became some eight or nine 
months later, and it devolved upon Wisconsin to 
look after her own suffering soldiers. The gov- 
ernor organized a relief expedition, which, heavily 
laden with supplies, set out on the tenth for Mound 
City, Paducah and Savannah, where the wants of 
the stricken were amply met. Upon the nineteenth, 
Harvey, who was just setting out for home, lost his 
life by drowning, being aboard the steamer " Dun- 
leith," which collided at Savannah with the " Minne- 
haha." Soon after his death his widow entered the 
ranks of the Sanitarv Commission, and hundreds 



WISCONSIN ON A WAR FOOTING. 287 

of Wisconsin soldiers have good reason to regard 
her as one of the noblest women whom the war 
brought to hospital service at the front. 

Harvey was succeeded by his Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor, Salomon, who soon developed great capac- 
ity in the management of war matters. Regi- 
ments were quickly raised and equipped under his 
supervision, and several relief expeditions sent to 
succor the sick and wounded in the field. There 
was sore need just then for men like Salomon, 
imbued with patriotism and energy. The Union 
army had suffered seriously, the Confederacy was 
now seen to be a power that would require long 
and hard fighting to subdue, the people of the 
North were appreciating for the first time what 
a terrible struggle was on hand, national cur- 
rency was fast depreciating in value, dark days 
were upon the land, and at home the " peace-at- 
any-price" people were making the path of the 
government as difficult as possible. Wisconsin 
had already lost several thousand of her bravest 
and most vigorous citizens, every community had 
its great sorrow, the cost of the war was begin- 
ning to bear heavily upon the purses of the poor in 
the shape of low wages and high prices, and anx- 
iety was deeply graven on every face. But the 
great bulk of the people of Wisconsin, demo- 
crats and republicans alike, never wavered. There 



288 JVJSCONS/N ON A WAR J'OOTJAG. 

were no party lines drawn, with regard to the 
common cause. The words of Douglas expressed 
the sentiment of the time : " There can be but 
two parties in this war — loyal men and traitors." 
There were, however, a few scattered groups of 
foreign-born, who had not yet sufficiently ab- 
sorbed the spirit which actuated those who had 
been longer upon our soil and nourished upon 
our institutions. When, in August, 1862, the 
government demanded three hundred thousand 
men, to be obtained by conscription, of which 
number Wisconsin was called on for twelve 
thousand, there were murmurs of dissatisfaction 
among the malcontents, who were chiefly Belgians. 
The draft besfan in November. At Port Wash- 
ington, in Ozaukee county, the militia rolls were 
seized and destroyed by a mob, which was led 
by a saloon-keeper ; the draft commissioner fled 
for his life, his house and the dwellings of other 
prominent citizens being ruthlessly sacked. At 
West Bend, in Washington county, similar scenes 
were enacted. By this time the governor was 
awake to the situation ; and when, a few days 
later, the draft opened in Milwaukee, the streets 
of that city were patrolled by troops selected 
from Wisconsin regiments then in camp, and 
the riotous element, which had been loud in its 
threats, subsided before this show of superior 



WISCONSIN ON A WAR lOOTING. 2 89 

force. The rioters at Port Washington and West 
Bend were promptly arrested and thrust into guard- 
houses at the central rendezvous camps, but after 
a few months' imprisonment were released. There 
were no further demonstrations in opposition to 
conscription, in Wisconsin. 

In August and September, 1862, a new and un- 
expected danger arose. In Minnesota, the Sioux 
under Little Crow were carrying death and destruc- 
tion through many a fertile valley, and endeavor- 
ing to organize a general Indian uprising in the 
Northwest. The Wisconsin Indians were restive 
under the persuasions of their friends across the 
Mississippi, and the white borderers in the north- 
western counties of the State were fearful that 
the scenes of blood in Minnesota might be re- 
enacted at their own homes. Governor Salomon 
promptly dispatched arms and ammunition to the 
seat of the disturbance, thus convincing the Indians 
that they were being watched, and would receive 
punishment if they deserved it. All grounds for 
apprehension were soon removed. 

Salomon was succeeded as governor, in Jan- 
uary, 1864, by James T. Lewis, who did good 
service in carrying out and completing the plans 
so successfully inaugurated by his predecessors. 
To him fell the pleasure, the tenth of April, 
1865, of formally announcing to the legislature 



290 ll'JSCOySIN ON A WAR JOOTING. 

"the surrenclcr of General Lee and liis army — 
the last prop of the Rebellion." This was virt- 
ually the close of the war. The few scattered 
remnants of the Confederate forces soon surren- 
dered one by one, the last being the command of 
E. Kirby Smith, in Louisiana, the twenty-sixth 
of May. On the thirteenth of April, recruiting 
was discontinued in Wisconsin. Two weeks 
later, all organizations whose terms of service ex- 
pired by the following first of October, were ordered 
mustered out. The provost marshal's offices were 
closed throughout the State, regiments were dis- 
banded at intervals during the summer, fall and 
succeeding winter — for several of them had 
been sent to the Rio Grande to keep the Mex- 
icans in check, and to the far Northwest to 
protect the Indian frontier — by the close of 
the year the absorbing business of war had for 
the most part ceased, and all haste was now made 
to again place Wisconsin on a peace footing. 



CHAPTER XI. 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 




fera.nJ i§)aLcKtm of tKe]V|( 



™c^.q 



HE part which Wis- 
consin troops took 
in the various armies 
of the Union was 
continual and effec- 
tive. We have space 
for allusion to a few 
only of the striking 
features of their ser- 
vice. 

On the second of July, 1861, the First Wiscon- 
sin, then of Abercrombie's brigade — employed in 
a futile attempt to prevent Johnston from reinforc- 
ing Beauregard at Bull Run — met the enemy in 
a skirmish at Falling Waters. George Drake, a 
private from Milwaukee, was killed in the brush, 
thus being not only the first Wisconsin man to 
give up his life in the cause of the Union, but the 
first soldier to fall in the valley of the Shenan- 
doah, soon to become one of the bloodiest scenes 
in the ereat theater of war. 



291 



292 dp: EDS OF I A LOR. 

At tlic first Hull Run, the Second Wisconsin, 
which was prominent in the contest for Henry Hill, 
won high praise from Sherman for steadiness and 
nerve, qualities which afterwards made for the regi- 
ment an international reputation. It lost over one 
seventh of the command in killed and wounded, in 
that action, and was among the last to leave the 
luckless field. The total loss sustained by this 
regiment throughout the war, represented the 
extreme limit of danger to which human life was 
exposed during the protracted struggle; for out of 
an enrollment of 1203, there were 238 killed or 
mortally w^ounded, being 19.7 per cent, of the 
whole. It must be remembered that this enroll- 
ment includes non-combatants — musicians, team- 
sters, cooks, servants, hospital assistants and quar- 
termaster's men — also the sick, detailed men and 
all manner of absentees ; while those of the 
wounded who lived, however miserable their condi- 
tion, are not included in the loss above enumerated. 
As a matter of fact, the records show that nearly 
nine hundred men in the Second Wisconsin were 
killed or wounded, leaving but few unharmed of 
those who carried arms. Thus this gallant com- 
mand stands at the head of the percentage list of 
regimental losses in killed and died of wounds, dur- 
ing the war. The Seventh and Twenty-sixth Wis- 
consin are fifth in that fatal column, their losses in 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 293 

killed or mortally wounded being equally 17.2 per 
cent, of their total enrollment. The Thirty-sixth, 
with a loss of 15.4 per cent., has the sixteenth place 
upon this national roll of honor.* 

The Third was at Frederick, Maryland, in Sep- 
tember, 1 86 1, having been sent to capture the 
*' bogus " legislature assembled there for the avowed 
purpose of passing an ordinance of secession. 
The Wisconsin men accomplished the purpose for 
which they had been detailed, and kept the Mary- 
land les[islators in the 2;uard-house until the latter 
acknowledged a change of heart. 

On the bloody field of Shiloh, in April, 1862, 
the Fourteenth, Sixteenth and Eighteenth Wiscon- 
sin infantry won renown. The Sixteenth and 
Eighteenth were entirely raw, this being their 
first engagement ; yet they stood to the rack with 
admirable nerve, steadily held their ground and 
elicited the warmest praise from the newspaper 
correspondents on the field. The Fourteenth was 
not engaged in the first day's fight, not arriving on 
the ground until midnight. It was an ugly night 
and the troops stood in pelting rain and mud, ankle- 
deep, waiting for the morning which was ushered 
in with a desperate struggle. All of the second 
day, the Fourteenth stood up like veterans, winning 

* Fox's " Regimental Losses in the American Civil War," from which the above percent- 
age figures are taken, places the Seventh Wisconsin as third in the maximum table of losses 
in killed or died of wounds, the Sixth as tenth, and the Second as thirteenth. 



294 DEEDS OE VALOR. 

Grant's especial admiration. The battle had not 
been long in progress when a Kentucky regiment, 
brigaded with the Fourteenth Wisconsin, was 
ordered to charge a Confederate battery, but fell 
back in confusion, having been repulsed with great 
loss. " It was then," writes Lieutenant-Colonel 
Messmore of the Fourteentli, "that General Grant 
rode up to where I was standing, immediately in 
the rear of our regiment, and said to me, ' Can't 
your regiment take that battery ? ' My reply was, 
' We will try ! ' and I immediately passed through 
the center of the regiment to tlie front, and gave 
the order to charo-e." The two leading; field ofTficers 
of the regiment being disabled in the outset, this 
notable charge was led by Major John Hancock, 
and was one of the most gallant in the war. 
Althouo'h thrice driven back, the Wisconsin men 
finally broke the Confederate line, the coveted bat- 
tery was captured, and the rout began which soon 
resulted in complete victory for the Union cause. 

In the Peninsular campaign of 1862, Wisconsin 
w^as represented by the Fifth and by Company G, 
of Berdan's sharpshooters — the latter, a notable 
command which was continually winning laurels 
throughout the war. The Fifth was in Hancock's 
brigade at Williamsburg, which made a famous 
bayonet charge on the enemy, routing and scatter- 
ing them, thus turning the wavering fortunes of 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 



295 



the day in favor of the Union. In this daring 
onslaught, the Fifth won high honors, and on 
dress parade two days later, General McClellan 
addressed the regiment in words of glowing praise, 
saying, " Through you we won the day, and Wil- 
liamsburo- shall be inscribed on your banner. 




THE WISCONSIN FOURTEENTH CHARGING THE BATTEKY, 

Your country owes you its grateful thanks." 
In telegraphing to the War DepartnT^ent, he said 
that the charge was " brilliant in the extreme." 

In the Shenandoah valley campaign, in 1862, the 
Third bore a prominent part. At Gainesville, the 
Second, Sixth and Seventh — which now formed 
the greater part of the Iron Brigade of the First 



296 DEEDS OF lALOK. 

corps* — fought so well that Pope declared they 
were " among the best troops in the service." The 
Second, while leading the brigade, which was 
marching in column, w^as attacked by a Confederate 
battery posted on a wooded eminence to the left. 
The regiment ])romptly advanced upon the battery 
and soon encountered the enemy's infantry. While 
awaiting the arrival of the rest of the brigade, 
these brave sons of Wisconsin sustained and 
checked, with remarkable courage, forncarly twenty 
long minutes, the terrific onset of the divisions of 
Taliaferro and Ewell, aided by four Confederate 
batteries. The battle w-as continued by the brigade 
for some hours, until nine o'clock in the evening, 
when the attack was repulsed and the National 
flag floated triumphantly over the field. The New 
York Seventy-sixth and the Pennsylvania P""ifty- 
sixth, of Doubleday's brigade, w^ere sent to the 
assistance of the gallant Iron Brigade, shortly be- 
fore the firing ceased ; but as they did not materi- 
ally aid in the result, the honors of the fight belong 
to the latter. In this brief but bloody engagement, 
one of the sharpest of the minor battles of the 
war, the Second Wisconsin's casualties amounted 
!o sixty per cent, of its rank and file, and the entire 
Iron Brigade lost nine hundred men. 

* The Iron I?iii;afie wns Ihen composotl of the .Second, Sixth and Seventh Wisconsin, and 
Nineteenth Indiana ; in October, 1R62, the Twcntv-fomth Michigan was added. The 
heaviest aggregate loss by brigades, in the entire war, fell to this gallant command. 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 297 

The Iron Brigade also participated in the second 
battle of Bull Run. It covered the retreat of 
Pope's army from that battle-field, being selected 
for the arduous task by McDowell. Two weeks 
later, the war-worn veterans were heard from at 
South Mountain, where they took a prominent 
part in the engagement of September fourteenth. 
To them was assigned the storming of the 
enemy, which was posted in Turner's Gap and 
across the National road at that point. The 
assault began at half-past five in the evening, 
the Second Wisconsin again leading on the 
left of the road and the Sixth and Seventh on 
the right. By nine o'clock the enemy had been 
routed and driven from the pass, but the gallant 
victory was a bloody one. The flying foe was 
chased through Boonesboro, the Iron Brigade being 
in advance of the entire Army of the Potomac and 
receiving the enemy's retreating fire. 

At Antietam, which Greeley said was "the 
bloodiest day America ever knew," the Third 
Wisconsin — hardly recovered from the shock re- 
ceived at Cedar Mountain, where it opened the 
battle — won enviable renown, standing in an ex- 
posed position and firing steadily, " until the fallen 
cartridge papers, for months afterwards, showed by 
a strange windrow its perfect line of battle." The 
Third lost nearly two thirds of the men it took 



2 9^ DEEDS OF I'.lf.OA'. 

into the fight. The Fifth, too, was prominent upon 
that sanguinary field, stubbornly supporting a bat- 
tery during the fiercest of the fray. The Iron 
Brigade did valiant service, the galling fire of the 
Sixth Wisconsin from behind a stout rail-fence 
being one of the features of the day. Battery B, 
of tlie Fourth United States artillery, was largely 
composed of men from the Wisconsin regiments of 
the Iron Brigade, and at Antietam sustained the 
heaviest loss met by any battery on either side in 
any one battle of the war. 

In the battle of Corinth, several Wisconsin in- 
fantry regiments and four of its batteries were 
accorded exceptional praise. On the occasion of 
the second battle, the brigade commander reported 
of the Fourteenth, which had won such glory at 
Shiloh : " This regiment was the one to rely upon 
in every emergency; always cool, steady and vigor- 
ous." The Seventeenth made a wild, tearing 
charge, causing the brigadier to cry, " Boys of the 
Seventeenth, you have made the most glorious 
charge of the campaign ! " The Eighteenth, too, 
was praised for " most effectual service," while the 
Eighth and Sixteenth came in for their share of 
honorable mention. The Sixth battery " did noble 
work," said (General Hamilton. To the Twelfth 
battery, General Sullivan said, " Boys, I am proud 
of you. You have done nobly. The dead in front 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 299 

of your battery show the work you have done." 
The Fifth and the Eighth batteries also won honor 
for Wisconsin upon this field. 

At Chaplin Hills, near Perry ville, Ky., five days 
later, the First Wisconsin quickly rallied from the 
disorder which threatened to involve Buell 's army 
in disaster, and cried out to General Rousseau, 
" Lead us to the front ! " The result is told in that 
general's report : " They drove back the enemy 
several times with great loss, and until their ammu- 
nition gave out bravely maintained their position." 
They captured a stand of Confederate colors and 
were the heroes of the hour. The Tenth Wiscon- 
sin was seven hours under fire, and lost fifty-four 
per cent, of the men it took into action. Said 
Rousseau of this command, " Repeatedly assailed 
by overwhelming numbers, after exhausting its am- 
munition it still held its position. These brave 
men are entitled to the gratitude of the country." 
Buell's report makes honorable mention of Ser- 
geant William Nelson, of Company I of the Tenth, 
who, with a detail of twenty-two men, for two hours 
held Paint Rock railroad bridge, near Huntsville, 
against a force of nearly three hundred Confederate 
cavalry, " repulsing them in the most signal man- 
ner. This example," Buell continues, " is worthy 
of imitation by higher oiificers and larger com- 
mands." The Fifteenth captured heavy stores of 



300 DEEDS OE I' A /.OR. 

amnuiiiition and many prisoners. The Twenty- 
first won the praise of iMcCook for a withering fire 
}X)ured into an overwliehning force of the enemy, 
which had swooped down upon the Wisconsin men 
while lying in a corn-field. Here again the Fifth 
battery figured prominently by three times turning 
back a Confederate charge. McCook thanked the 
brave artillerymen on the field, saying, " They 
saved the division from a disgraceful defeat." 

At Prairie Grove, Ark,, the first week in Decem- 
ber, the Union forces were composed of Western 
men, among whom Wisconsin troops were conspicu- 
ous. The Twentieth Wisconsin, in company with 
the Nineteenth Iowa, made a most desperate charge 
on a rebel battery. They were repulsed, but Gen- 
eral Herron says, " Their charge was a glorious 
sight. Better men never went upon the field." In 
this action, the loss sustained by the Twentieth in 
killed or mortally wounded, was eighty-six, the 
larsfest death loss that ever fell to any Union reiji- 
ment in any one battle during the war. Of the 
Second and Tliird Wisconsin cavalry, also present, 
Herron declared that they had proved themselves 
" worthy of the name of American soldiers." The 
Third cavalry executed some particularly skillful 
manoeuvers and sharply attacked the Confederate 
left wing, 

A week later, occurred the great battle of Freder- 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 301 

icksbiirg, where the Iron Brigade held an exposed 
and dangerous position on the extreme left of the 
Union army, being constantly under severe artil- 
lery fire. 

The terrible strug:s:le at Stone River closed the 
year's campaign. Here, Wisconsin was represented 
by the First, Tenth, Fifteenth, Twenty-first and 
Twenty-fourth infantry,* besides the Third, F"ifth 
and Eiohth batteries. In the contest of the thir- 
tieth of December, the Fifteenth infantry captured 
a gun ; while Sheridan spoke of the " splendid con- 
duct, bravery and efficiency of the Twenty-fourth 
Wisconsin." Brigade commander Scribner said, 
" The Tenth Wisconsin would have suffered exter- 
mination rather than yield its ground without 
orders." Rousseau reported that when his supply 
trains were attacked by the enemy's cavalry, " The 
burden of the fight fell on the Twenty-first Wis- 
consin, who behaved like veterans." General Davis 
said that the conduct of the Fifth battery was "gal- 
lant and distinguished; " and the commander of the 
brigade to which the Eighth battery was attached, 
alluded to the " determined bravery and chivalrous 
heroism of officers and men." 

Wisconsin troops were prominent throughout 
the "mud campaign," during the early months of 
1863, wherein the Army of the Potomac, sadly 

* The Twenty-fourth was popularly known as the " Milwaukee Regiment." 



302 DEEDS OE I A J. OR. 

liarasscd, wallowed about in the floating soil of 
Viroinia. The battle of Fitz Huirh's Crossino- the 
twenty-ninth of April, was a lively affair for the 
old Iron Briq-ade. To it was assii^ned the danijcr- 
ous duty of crossing the Rappahannock in boats 
and carrying the enemy's first line, for the purpose 
of covering the pontoon-layers. The brigade made 
a brilliant dash across the river, charged up the op- 
posite heights, carried the Confederate riflepits at 
the point of the bayonet, and captured several hun- 
dred prisoners. 

At Chancellorsville, a few days later, the Third 
Wisconsin was in the division which was thrown 
forward as a barrier to the advance of Stonewall 
Jackson, after the latter had crushed the Eleventh 
corps. Jackson was held back for the time, and 
the next day when all was lost, the stubborn Third 
was the last regiment to withdraw from the pres- 
ence of the foe. 

While this contest was being waged, the Fifth 
Wisconsin was winning undying laurels near by, on 
Marye's Hill, at Fredericksburg. In the preceding 
December, over six thousand Union soldiers under 
Burnside had been slaughtered, while charging the 
Confederates lying in the sunken roadway winding 
about the base of this famous height. But it was 
now necessary that the attemj^t should again be 
made, and Col. Thomas S. .Allen, of the Fifth Wis- 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 303 

consin, was ordered to lead the forlorn hope and 
arrange all details. The Fifth Wisconsin and the 
Sixth Maine volunteered to lead the column. The 
brave commander walked among his men, inspiring 
them to the hazardous deed. " My boys," he said, 
"do you see those works in front? We have got to 
take them ! Perhaps you think you cannot do it, 
but I know you can, I am confident of it. When 
the order to advance comes, you will trail arms 
and move forward on the double-quick. Do not 
fire a gun and do not stop until you get the order 
to halt. You will never get that order! " 

The order to forward came. From the riflemen 
behind the stone-wall flanking the roadway, from 
the houses along the base, from the batteries on 
the heights above, was poured upon these devoted 
men from Wisconsin and Maine a terrible storm of 
iron and lead. Grape and canister mowed their 
ranks. They were in the grand highway to death ; 
still they pushed on and on, supported from be- 
hind by regiments from New York and other 
States, but themselves alone in the vortex of de- 
struction. Over stone wall, through brier and 
bramble, Over the slippery places, up among the 
rolling bowlders, clutching to bushes, scrambling 
on all-fours, digging, pitching, climbing over heaps 
of dead and wounded, overcoming line after line of 
redoubts, the men who were not to halt finally 



304 DEEDS OF r.U.OA'. 

reached the summit. There were wild liurralis, 
tlie gleam of bayonets, the roar and smoke of 
cannon, the shrieks of the dying; and then the 
enemy turned and ran, and Colonel Allen's men — 
such of them as were left — were the victors of 
Marye's Heights. The Southern -sympathizing 
correspondent of The London Times, writing from 
Lee's headquarters about this terrible assault, de- 
clared : " Never at Fontenoy, Albuera, nor at 
Waterloo was more undaunted courage displayed." 
And Greeley wrote : " Braver men never smiled on 
death, than those who climbed Marye's Hill on 
that fatal day." The Confederate commander told 
the Wisconsin colonel, as he handed him his sword 
and his silver spurs, that he had supposed there 
were not troops enough in the entire army of the 
Potomac to carry the works, and declared that it 
was the most daring assault he had ever seen. • 

Twelve of Wisconsin's infantry regiments and 
one of her cavalry, besides three of her batteries, 
took part in the campaign which led to the fall of 
Vicksbure, in 1^63 — the Second cavalry, the 
First, Sixth, and Twelfth batteries, and the Eighth. 
Eleventh, Twelfth, Fourteenth, Seventeenth, Eight- 
eenth, Twentieth, Twenty - third. Twenty - fifth, 
Twenty-seventh, Twenty-ninth and Thirty-third 
infantry. \\\ the preliminary engagements, the 
Twcnty-third received high encomiums for the part 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 305 

it played in the capture of Arkansas Post and in 
the battle of Port Gibson ; in reports of the latter 
engagement, the Eleventh and Twenty-ninth were 
also honorably mentioned. The Eighth and Eight- 
eenth helped to carry the town of Jackson. At 
Champion Hills, the Sixth Battery and Twenty- 
third Infantry rendered conspicuous service ; but 
the Twenty-ninth infantry, which assisted the 
Eleventh Indiana in a singularly-daring capture of 
a battery and a stand of colors, won exceptional 
honors. The Eleventh Wisconsin distinguished 
itself the following day by a brilliant charge 
against the enemy, on the Big Black. All of 
the Wisconsin troops were hotly engaged during 
the investment of Vicksburg. The assault of 
May twenty-second was participated in by the 
Fourteenth, Eleventh and Eighth. The Four- 
teenth lost nearly half of its men, and was given 
the post of honor when Rousseau's division entered 
the city after the surrender. " Every man in the 
Fourteenth," said that general in his order, " is a 
hero." The Twelfth, Eighteenth, Twenty-third 
and Twenty-seventh did remarkably good service 
throughout the siege ; and it was an officer of the 
Twenty-third who received Pemberton's offer to 
surrender, at the base of the works. 

Upon the day of the surrender of Vicksburg, 
occurred the battle of Helena, Ark. Here the 



306 DEEDS OF I A LOR. 

Twenty-eiglitli \\'i>c()nsin liad done most valiant 
deeds, and a Wisconsin man, General Salomon, 
had planned the admirable defenses by which 
victory was attained. Five days later, Port Hudson 
yielded up to Hanks and Farragut its garrison of 
six thousand men. One of the memorable events 
of the siege was the charge into the ditch, made by 
the Fourth Wisconsin, of which Greeley wrote, 
" Never was fio-htincr more heroic." 

But in the East, even greater events had hap- 
pened. On the field of Gettysburg, the first three 
days of July, 1863, was fought the most moment- 
ous battle of the Rebellion. And here again Wis- 
consin soldiers w^ere destined to be prominent 
factors in the fight. The Iron Brigade had en- 
dured a tedious march of one hundred and sixty 
miles during the last tw^o weeks of June, and did 
not reach the field of action in prime condition. 
But there was no time then for recuperation. Lee 
had invaded Pennsylvania, and unless promptly 
checked might turn the tide of events in favor of 
the Confederacy. It was the supreme crisis of the 
war. 

Pearly in the morning of the first of July, the 
First corps — to which the Iron Brigade was at- 
tached — advanced cautiously in the direction of 
Gettysburg, being assigned to the suj^port of Bu- 
ford's cavalry. The favorite Second Wisconsin 



DEEDS OE VALOR. 307 

had that day the lead of the corps, and, first to 
meet the enemy — Heth's division of A. P. Hill's 
corps — began the infantry part of the battle of 
Gettysburg. The regiment came into line on the 
double-quick, behind a slight elevation, and without 
waiting for the rest of the brigade to form, ad- 
vanced with steadiness over the crest, receiving a 
volley which mowed down over thirty per cent, of 
its rank and file. * A few minutes after, its gal- 
lant colonel, Lucius Fairchild, lost an arm ; and it 
was while in the rear of this regiment that General 
Reynolds, commanding the left grand division, was 
killed. The other regiments of the brigade — ex- 
cept the Sixth Wisconsin, which had been halted 
by General Doubleday to serve as a reserve — 
soon came up, and after a wild conflict of less than 
thirty minutes' duration the Confederates entirely 
abandoned the field, leaving eight hundred prison- 
ers, including General Archer, in the hands of the 
brigade. Meanwhile the Sixth had been ordered 
to the assistance of Cutler's brigade, now being 
driven back into the village, and made a brilliant 
charge on the" railway cut, capturing the Second 
Mississippi with its colors. The Iron Brigade, 
soon after it captured Archer, was forced by over- 
powering numbers to fall back on Cemetery Hill, 



* The Second Wisconsin lost one hundred and eighty-one in killed and wounded, not in- 
cluding missing, at Gettysburg, which was sixty per cent, of the men It had in the fight. 



3o8 DKEDS OP I'.ILOA'. 



where it intrenched itself and remained exposed 
to the enemy's artillery throughout the remainder of 
the battle. The brigade took 1883 men into action, 
rank and file, and lost 121 2 in killed, wounded and 
missing — 64.3 per cent. The Third Wisconsin 
drove Ewell from Gulp's Hill and clung to its posi- 
tion despite a terrible cross-fire, in which its ranks 
melted away like ice before a furnace. Of the 
ofBcers of the Twenty-sixth, only four remained 
unhurt. The Wisconsin company of Berdan's sharp- 
shooters was in the key of battle when the enemy 
attempted, on their final charge, to break the Union 
center. The Fifth Wisconsin infantry was on the 
extreme left of the Union army, and was thus not 
given an opportunity to show its mettle. 

During the retreat of the Iron Brigade to Ceme- 
tery Hill, on the afternoon of the first day, Daniel 
McDermott, color sergeant of the Seventh Wis- 
consin, fell severely wounded. Fearing that if he 
died on the contested field or was captured, his 
fiag would be seized as a prize by the enemy, he 
tore the stars and stripes from the staff and stuffed 
the precious emblem in his bosom. Later, his 
comrades picked him up and carried him back with 
them on a caisson. It was thought for a time that 
the colors of the Seventh had been captured, but 
when the unconscious hero was being treated at 
the hospital, they were found safe within his 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 311 

jacket. The brave McDermott lived, and the ban- 
ner he saved can still be seen in the Wisconsin 
State House. 

Another dramatic occurrence at Gettysburg is 
thus related by General Doubleday : " An officer 
of the Sixth Wisconsin approached Lieutenant- 
Colonel Dawes, the commander of the regiment, 
after the sharp fight in the railway cut. The Col- 
onel supposed from the firm and erect attitude of 
the man, that he came to report for orders of some 
kind ; but the compressed lips told a different 
story. With a great effort the officer said : ' Tell 
them at home I died like a man and a soldier!' 
He threw open his breast, displayed a ghastly 
wound, and dropped dead at the colonel's feet." 

The incident of " John Burns of Gettysburg " 
was one of the most romantic connected with the 
great struggle. Burns was a resident of the fated 
village, some seventy years of age; he had served 
in the War of 18 12-15, the Seminole War in 1835 
and the Mexican War, and, endeavoring to enlist in 
the Union army in 1861, had been rejected as too 
old. Upon the arrival of the Union forces at 
Gettysburg, he attached himself to Company F of 
the Seventh Wisconsin, and fought with them on 
the skirmish line in the open fields. He was 
a singular character in appearance, clothes and 
action, but a remarkably skillful marksman and 



312 DEEDS OF I'ALOR. 

displayed a degree of iDravery never excelled. 
The poor fellow was wounded in the course of 
the afternoon, and captured by the Confederates 
but finally released, they probably not fully under- 
standiniT the character of his mission at the front. 
Burns made for himself a national reputation. 
The familiar story of his record, which every school- 
boy recites in the dashing lines of Bret Harte, has 
been explicitly told in matter-of-fact prose, by Ser- 
geant George Eustice of Company F, as follows : 



It must have been about noon when I saw a little old man coming up 
in the rear of Company F. In regard to the peculiarities of his dress, I 
remember he wore a swallow-tailed coat with smooth brass buttons. He 
had a rifle on his shoulder. We boys began to poke fun at him as soon as 
he came amongst us, as we thought no civilian in his senses would show 
himself in such a place. Finding that he had really come to fight I wanted 
to put a cartndge-bo.x on him to make him look like a soldier, telling him 
he could not fight without one. Slapping his pantaloons pocket he replied: 
" I can get my hands in here quicker than in a box. I'm not used to them 
new-fangled things." In answer to the question what possessed him to 
come out there at such a time, he replied that the rebels had either driven 
away or milked his cows, and that he was going to be even with them. 
About this time the enemy began to advance. Bullets were flying thicker 
and faster, and we hugged the ground about as close as we could. Burns got 
behind a tree and surprised us all by not taking a double-quick to the rear. 
■He was as calm and collected as any veteran on the ground. We soon had 
orders to get up and move about a hundred yards to the right, when we 
were engaged in one of the most stubborn contests I ever experienced. 
Foot by foot we were driven back to a point near the seminary, where we 
made a stand, but were finally driven through the town to Cemetery Ridge. 
I never saw John Burns after our movement to the right, when we left him 
behind his tree, and only know that he was true blue and grit to the back- 
bone, and fought until he was three times wounded. 



In .September, on the sanguinary field of Chicka- 
mauga, Wisconsin was rc'j)resente(l hv the I'irst, 



DEEDS OE VALOR. 313 

Tenth, Fifteenth, Twenty-first and Twenty-fourth* 
infantry, and the Third, Fifth and Eighth batteries, 
all of which fought most heroically and suffered 
heavy losses. 

Several of these commands were in the famous 
left wing, under Thomas, and participated in 
that slow, stubborn and successful resistance 
to Longstreet's corps, which gained for Thomas the 
sobriquet, " The rock of Chickamauga." Later, 
the same Wisconsin troops were besieged in Chat- 
tanooga, where they suffered great hardships from 
the lack of provisions, until Grant opened up new 
sources of supply and introduced plenty in the 
place of direful want. By the middle of November, 
Sherman arrived on the scene with the Fifteenth 
corps, of which the Eighteenth Wisconsin was a 
member — a corps ot which its commander exult- 
ingly wrote, " I assert that there is no better body of 
soldiers in America than it." Ten days after Sher- 
man put in an appearance, the battle of Mission 
Ridge was fought, the Confederate army under 
Bragg being completely defeated and sent flying 
back into central Georgia. In this important 
and picturesque action, the First, Tenth, Fif- 
teenth, Eighteenth, Twenty-first, Twenty-fourth 
and Twenty-sixth Wisconsin infantry proudly 
shared, encountering without a waver the grape 

* General Lytle met bis death in the rear of this regiment. 



314 DEEDS OF I A 1.0 n. 

and canister of the enemy during tlie fearful 
charo^e to the summit. 

At Warrenton Junction, near tlie Rappahannock, 
just at the close of day on the seventh of November, 
General Sedgwick, in command of the Fifth and 
Sixth corps, received orders to "jdusIi the ePjemy 
across the river before dark, if possible." The 
banks of the stream were protected by two Confed- 
erate redoubts, connected by a curtain of rifle-pits. 
Russell s division was ordered to carry them by as- 
sault. The Fifth Wisconsin and the Sixth Maine, 
which had so heroically charged Marye's Hill, were 
in front, and despite the scorching fire (^f the enemy 
and the rough ground, moved with steadiness on 
the works, broke over the parapet and set the Con- 
federates to rout. It was a brilliant affair, led by 
the brave General Russell, and the two regiments 
were mentioned with enthusiasm in the reports. 
Both General Meade, commander of the Army of 
the Potomac, and the secretary of war, warmly 
congratulated the victors ; and well they might, for 
four guns, two thousand small arms, a bridge-train, 
eight battle flags and sixteen hundred prisoners had 
been taken in the heroic assault. 

At Carrion Crow bayou, Louisiana, the same 
month, the Twenty-third also won laurels. This 
regiment, with others forming a column sent as a 
feint against 0])elousas, was surprised in the woods 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 315 

by a strong party of Confederates ; the entire 
Union force would have been destroyed but for the 
consummate bravery of the Twenty-third Wiscon- 
sin and Nim's battery. The regiment was quickly 
reduced in this terrible conflict, from two hundred 
and twenty-six men to ninety-eight, its colonel being 
wounded and captured. 

Wisconsin soldiers supped their full share of 
horrors in Confederate prisons, being sometimes 
massed by hundreds, for months together, in such 
dens of despair as Belle Isle, Danville, Florence, 
Macon, Salisbury, Libby and Andersonville. On 
the night of February 9, 1864, one hundred and 
nine Union of^cers escaped from Libby prison by 
means of a tunnel dug by fifteen prisoners under 
the leadership of Col. Thomas E. Rose, of the Sev- 
enty-seventh Pennsylvania. Colonel Rose and the 
working party first passed out at seven o'clock ; 
arrangements had been made by Rose with Col. 
H. C. Hobart of the Twenty-first Wisconsin, to 
carefully cover up the traces of the fugitives and 
to follow with a second party of fifteen, the follow- 
ing night. But the escape of Rose and his fellow 
workers became generally known throughout the 
crowded prison, within two hours after their depart- 
ure, and the scramble for the tunnel was so fierce 
that Colonel Hobart was oblioed to chano-e the 
plan and open the passage to all. Of those who 



o 



1 6 DEEDS UF lALOK. 



emerged from the sickening hole, forty-eight were 
run down and recaptured by the Confederates, 
among them being Lieut. Charles H. Morgan, also 
of the Twenty-first Wisconsin. 

In March, 1864, Banks set out to carry the war 
into the valley of the Red River, his objective point 
being Shreveport, at the head of steam navigation 
on that water. The Wisconsin troops in this ex- 
pedition were the Fourth Cavalry and Eighth, 
F"ourteenth, Twenty-third, Twenty-ninth and Thirty- 
third infantry regiments. The Eighth, one of 
the bravest commands in the Union service, was 
popularly known as " The Eagle Regiment," from 
the fact that the men of Company C carried as 
their emblem a live eagle on a ])erch ; this bird, 
named " Old Abe," in conipliment to the president, 
was an eye-witness of thirty-six battles and was fre- 
quently hit by the enemy's bullets; he appeared to 
take great delight in these scenes of carnage, and 
in processions had a self-acquired habit of })osing 
on his perch or upon a cannon, holding a corner 
of the national colors in his bill. It is no exagger- 
ation to say that Old Abe, who attained a world- 
wide reputation, won as great popularity in the 
Union army as any of its generals; and until his 
death, in March, 1881, he was in active demand at 
State and national soldiers' reunions. He was one 
of the features at the Northwest Sanitary I-'air in 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 317 

Chicago, in 1865 ; also at the Philadelphia Centen- 
nial Exposition, in 1876, and at the Old South 
Church Fair, in Boston, tlie winter of 1878-79. All 
of the Wisconsin regiments fought with untiring 
valor in the unfortunate Red River campaign. At 
Sabine Cross Roads, the Twenty-third was the last 
to leave the field — covering the retreat. 

The brightest honors of the expedition, however, 
were won by Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bailey, 
of the Fourth. The fleet had been carried 
safely above the rapids at Alexandria, but upon the 
return it was found the water had lowered, so that 
it was impossible to descend. The river was rap- 
idly falling, the enemy were swarming upon both 
banks, the navy was in a most perilous situation, 
and complete destruction appeared to stare the ex- 
pedition in the face. The one man who saved the 
Union from so irreparable a loss, was this modest 
Wisconsin officer, who now proved himself a genius. 
He was serving on General Franklin's staff as chief 
engineer, and proposed to build a system of dams 
by which the river was to be raised to a sufficient 
height, then an opening suddenly made, through 
which the vessels were to escape. The scheme 
appeared a visionary one to all of the other engi- 
neers, as well as to most of the leading officers ; but 
while they laughed at him as an innocent, he was 
permitted to try his proposed experiment. With 



J 



I 8 DEEDS OF I A 1.0 E. 



three thousaiul men lie toiled un weary ingly, from 
the thirtieth of April to the eighth of May. 
On the morning of the twelfth, the great gunboats 
plunged through the boiling chute and triumph 
antly steamed away, to the great discomfiture of the 
Confederates, who had thought to capture the expe- 
dition in the trap. Admiral Porter frankly wrote 
to headquarters that to " the indomitable ])ersever- 
ance and skill of Lieutenant-Colonel Bailey, to 
whom belongs the entire credit of the enterprise," 
the fleet owed its safety. The hero of the hour was 
presented by the naval ofificers in the expedition 
with a sword costing eight hundred dollars, was 
thanked by the navy department and soon after 
brevetted brigadier-general. It was upon Wiscon- 
sin piuery streams, where great log rafts are some- 
times " lifted " by artificial rises of water, induced 
by dams, that Bailey had learned his wisdom ; 
and it was the Wisconsin "lumber boys" of the 
Twenty-third and Twenty-r.inth regiments that he 
first asked for, when given permission to undertake 
his experiment in backwoods engineering. 

The Iron P)rigade, now under Cutler, was in 
Warren's corps (the F'ifth), in Grant's camjDaign 
against Richmond. It served gallantly and lost 
heavily in the Wilderness — sweei:)ing through two 
of the Confederate lines in the first day's fight \* 

•Cii-ncial WadsHiulli wa?; kilUd wliilr willi the Scvfiitli Wisconsin, 



DEEDS OE VALOR. 3ig 

it supported Hancock in the frightful hand-to-hand 
struggle over the " bloody angle " at Spottsylvania, 
resisting five of the enemy's determined assaults ; 
it participated in the battles of the North Anna 
(Jericho Ford) and Bethesda Church ; was in the as- 
saults on Petersburg (June iS and July 30, 1864), 
and fought at Weldon Railroad and Hatcher's Run ; 
— at this latter engagement, the Seventh Wisconsin 
made a large haul of prisoners.* The Fifth, also 
in this campaign, captured a battery with great 
heroism, at a time when the frontline of the Union 
charging column had been temporarily checked ; 
drove the Confederates from the field, at the cross- 
ing of the North Anna, and repelled and made 
numerous attacks before Petersburg. The Nine- 
teenth won fame by a splendid charge at Fair Oaks 
(October 27), in which they lost over half of their 
men. 

In the early summer of 1864, the Thirty-sixth, 
Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Wisconsin were 
organized and sent on to the Army of the Potomac. 
At Hatcher's Run, the Thirty-sixth, which had 
already sustained heavy losses,! displayed great 
valor by cutting through a line of the enemy and 



* June 10, 1S64, the Second Wisconsin, of this brigade, was released from duty and 
started for home. 

t In the small but bloody engagement near Rethesda Church Csometimes called tlie battle 
of the Tolopotomayl, June first, the Thirty-sixth suffered a loss of one hundred and sixty-six 
killed and wounded, or sixty-nine per cent, of the men taken into action. 



;20 DEEDS OF I' A J. OR. 



capturing three times its own numlicr of prisoners, 
with arms and colors. The Thirty-seventh, which 
exhibited rare grit, suffered the misfortune to be 
of the charging party into the Petersburg crater, 
July 30, 1864, losing one hundred and forty-five 
men out of the two hundred and fifty-one sent out. 
This same regiment, together with the Thirty- 
eighth Wisconsin, assisted, the second of April, 
1865, in the gallant charge on Fort Mahone, one 
of the chief defenses of Petersburg. The Thirty- 
eighth, with the air of veterans, led the attcking 
column, which advanced through a terrible storm 
of shot and shell, scrambling over the abattis and 
the enemy's works, driving the garrison out on the 
other side, and turning their guns against them. 
Although several attempts were made by the Con- 
federates during the day, to oust the captors, they 
were each time repulsed, and next day Petersburg 
and Richmond were in the hands of Grant. 

When Sherman was arranging, in the spring of 
1864, for the Atlantic campaign which Grant and 
himself had projected, he drew heavily upon the Wis- 
consin troops, selecting no less than fifteen Badger 
regiments and three batteries for his model army, 
which was to cut into the heart of the Confeder- 
acy—the First, Third. Tenth, Twelfth, Fifteenth, 
Sixteenth. Seventeenth. Twentv-first, Twenty-sec- 
ond, Twentv-fourth, Twenty-fifth. Twenty-sixth, 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 321 

Thirty-first and Thirty-second infantry, the First 
cavah-y, and the Fifth, Tenth and Twelfth bat- 
teries. The Wisconsin men were continually under 
fire from Chattanooga to Atlanta, being represented 
every day in the strong skirmish lines which were 
thrown out in advance of the main army. At 
Dalton, seven regiments from the Badger State 
were employed in harassing the enemy; at Resaca, 
eight ; while in the rash assault at Kenesaw Mount- 
ain, nine Wisconsin regiments were engaged. In 
meeting the Confederate onslaught from the en- 
trenchments on Peachtree Creek, seven regiments 
from Wisconsin were at the front. " No regiment 
ever did better," Fighting Joe Hooker said, than 
the Twenty-sixth Wisconsin on that occasion ; it 
"received the brunt of the battle on its brigade 
front and repulsed it, and followed it by a spirited 
charge." The Eighteenth was stationed at Alla- 
toona Pass, during the campaign, and, in company 
with the Twelfth battery, won distinction, October 
fifth, by assisting in the defense of the pass against 
repeated assaults from a greatly superior force of 
the enemy. 

During this movement on Atlanta, the Wisconsin 
Twelfth and Sixteenth were a part of McPherson's 
"whip-lash corps," which distinguished itself for a 
series of quick flank movements that continually 
astonished, and resulted in ousting, the enemy. 



32 2 J)KJinS OF VAJ.OK. 

W'lien the Confederates furiously stormed tlie left 
of the L'nion [)ositi()n before Atlanta itself, these 
two regiments, thougii attacked both in front and 
in rear, carried Leggitt's I lill by assault and kept 
it. It was not long before the Confederates in 
Atlanta sallied out and again assailed the brave 
Wisconsin men in the rear, but the latter jumped 
over the breastworks and fought froni the other 
side. It was a desperate encounter, each opposing 
force keeping its own side of the works, until the 
Confederates crept away in the dark. General 
Howard said, in commenting on this hand-to-hand 
struggle, " I never saw better conduct in battle." 
While Logan declared, that " The troops could not 
have displayed greater courage nor greater deter- 
mination not to give ground. Had they shown 
less, they would have been driven from the posi- 
tion." When, early in September, the Union 
army marched into iAllanta, the Twent\'-second 
and Twenty-sixth Wisconsin were among the first 
to enter the forsaken town — Company .A of the 
Twenty-second (laiming to have led the advance 
of the exultant conquerors. 

When Sherman set out from Atlanta, the fif- 
teenth of November, upon his famous march tti the 
sea, he was accomi:)anicd by ele\en of Wisconsin's 
infantry regiments and three of her batteries. 
Men from these conimands were detailed for every 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 323 

branch of the work of destruction which was to 
carry the war home to those people of the South 
who egged on and aided the Rebellion, yet were not 
themselves combatants. Wisconsin men were in 
the long skirmish lines ; formed part of the flank- 
ing parties ; lived the rollicking life of " bummers ; " 
tore up railroad tracks by the mile and twisted the 
heated rails into " Jeff Davis's neckties ; " applied 
the torch to railway depots, and the barns and 
mills of the wealthy planters ; guarded the fugitive 
blacks who, in mighty swarms, followed the advanc- 
ing columns, chanting strange hymns of jubilee. As 
the great army swept resistlessly through the heart 
of the South, Wisconsin troops were everywhere 
prominent, being relied upon by Sherman for the 
hardest work and wherever discretion was as need- 
ful as valor. They lost heavily in the subsequent 
siege of Savannah, and the difficult advance north- 
ward through the Carolinas, in the early months of 
1865, but were never defeated. 

It was evident, in early April, that the end of the 
war was near, and the men of Sherman's army were 
eager for the proposed junction with Grant and the 
Army of the Potomac; after their long and weary 
march they had hoped to be " in at the death," 
to help conquer Lee's army and the Confederate 
capital. But this great honor was not reserved for 
them. They had reached Goldsboro', N. C, April 



324 DEEDS OF VALOR. 

sixth, when news came that Richmond had fallen and 
Lee was hastening to join his lieutenant, Johnston. 
The course of Sherman's army was now changed. 
Instead of Richmond, he made Raleigh his objec- 
tive point, trusting to intercept Johnston either 
there or at Smithfiekl. They were at Smithfield 
on the eleventh, and it was now known that John- 
ston was retreating to Raleigh. On the road 
thither, the following day, a horseman dashing 
along the gleaming lines shouted the joyful mes- 
sao-e, " Grant has captured Lee's army ! " There 
was heartfelt gratitude, then, to the God of battles : 
sweet visions of home rose before the tear-dampened 
eyes of the boys of Wisconsin, along with the boys 
from every other loyal State ; at last " the cruel 
war was over," or practically so; peace would soon 
reign, the Union was saved. In a few days more, 
it was indeed over. The nation wavered betwixt 
her sorrow and her joy, doubtful whether tears 
or hosannas were most appropriate; for Lincoln 
had been foully assassinated, yet his work was done, 
for Johnston had surrendered and the Confederacy 
was crushed. 

Upon the very day when Lee was treating with 
Grant, Mobile fell. In the decisive assault on 
Spanish Fort, at the mouth of the harbor the even- 
ing before, the Twentieth, Twenty-ninth, Thirty- 
third and Tliirl\ -fifth Wisconsin were i)resent. 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 325 

While in the fierce attack on Fort Blakely, the 
Eleventh, Twenty-third and Twenty-ninth were en- 
gaged, the assaulting party of the Eleventh winning 
special honors. 

In the operations around Nashville, Tenn., dur- 
ing November and December previous, Wisconsin 
infantry had prominently figured. The Twenty- 
fourth was with Schofield at Franklin, where on the 
twenty-ninth of November, Hood made a fierce 
onslaught on the Union advance. At Nashville, 
December sixteenth, the Eighth, Twenty-fourth and 
Thirty-third regiments were part of Thomas's army, 
which crushed Hood's left flank and hurled the 
Confederates back toward Franklin in wild confu- 
sion, and with heavy loss of artillery and prisoners. 
The Wisconsin regiments had suffered their full 
share of Thomas's loss of about three thousand. 

The cavalrymen of Wisconsin were not behind 
her infantry, in their record as hard fighters. The 
F'irst regiment of cavalry wrought valiant deeds the 
first year of the war, in scouting and in dispersing 
guerrilla bands in Missouri. In Tennessee, it soon 
became noted for its gallant forays. It fought and 
raided at Chickamauga, was with Sherman in the 
Atlanta campaign, afterwards fought its way with 
Wilson in his notable raid through Alabama and 
Georgia ; it dismounted at West Point and assisted 
in the assault of Fort Tyler, which was captured 



o 



26 DEEDS OF I. I/O A' 



after a desperate fight. At Macon, came the news 
of Lee's surrender and Davis's flight. Thereupon 
a detachment from the First, under Lieutenant- 
Colonel Henry Harnden, took the direct road to 
Irwinsville, in the pursuit of the fugitive president 
of the Confederacy. It arrived at the camp of 
Davis on the tenth of May, a moment too late to 
make the actual capture ; for a detachment from the 
Fourth Michigan cavalry had, unknown to Colonel 
Harnden, taken another road and arrested the 
president and his companions just as the advance 
of Harnden's command came in sight. The Wis- 
consin men were, after a thorough investigation, 
given a full share of the honor and reward ac- 
corded the captors of the Confederate chief. 

The Second Wisconsin cavalry served in the 
Vicksburg campaign, was in Grierson's raid, and 
marched and skirmished all over Louisiana, Texas 
and Arkansas. The Third was largely engaged in 
pursuing and fighting guerrillas in Arkansas, hav- 
ing many brushes with Quantrell's band ; while at 
Prairie Grove it made a particularly brilliant record. 
The Fourth served at first as infantry, but in Sep- 
tember, 1863, was mounted as cavalry and had a 
dashing career in Louisiana and Texas, capturing 
prisoners in numbers several times exceeding its 
own. It has been claimed thnt the Fourth — which 
rendezvoused at Racine, June sixth, 1861, and was 



DEEDS OF VALOR. ^i^-] 

disbanded at Madison, about June twentieth, 1866 
— served the longest term of any volunteer regi- 
ment in the service. 

The artillerymen, too, were distributed through- 
out the several Union armies, and served with 
great distinction until the close of the war. To 
the navy, Wisconsin contributed but one hundred 
and thirty-three men, and to the colored troops 
one hundred and sixty-five. In the scouting ser- 
vice, Wisconsin soldiers were employed in many 
portions of the South, and the stary of their thrill- 
ing adventures and important services would make 
an interesting volume. In the hospitals, too, Wis- 
consin women nobly wrought, and the Sanitary 
Commission numbered them among its tireless 
workers. 

The war expenses of the State footed up to 
$11,704,932.55. She furnished 91,327 men, who 
were divided into fifty-three regiments of infantry, 
four of cavalry* and one of heavy artillery, besides 
thirteen light batteries. Of these men, 3,802 were 
either killed outright or mortally wounded, while 
8,499 met death from other causes — chiefly disease, 
bad treatment in Confederate prisons and accidents. 
This made the Wisconsin death-roll 12,301, an 
average of 16.6 per cent, of the total enlistment. 
If these statistics have a dry appearance, we must 

* The Fourth cavnhv was originally tlie Fourth infantry. 



32S DEEDS OF I A LOR. 



remember tliat each unit in the computation of dis- 
aster meant an empty chair at some Wisconsin fire- 
side, bleeding hearts in some Wisconsin home. 

It was not long after the famous meeting at 
Appomattox, before Wisconsin troops came march- 
ing home again, by regiments and battalions, 
covered with glory — they had fought in nearly 
every important battle in the war — and bronzed 
by long exposure to Southern skies. There 
were rejoicings all along the line. In the towns 
where they were* mustered out, there were recep- 
tions and banquets and speeches. School children 
lined the arched and festooned streets, waving 
banners and scattering flowers before the war- 
worn heroes of Badgerdom. Everywhere, the 
spirit of solemn festivity was abroad, and honors 
were heaped upon the brave. But beneath this 
show of gladness, away from the sound of boom- 
ing guns, the blare of trumpets, the swell of choral 
praise, the mellow notes of oratory, there was bit- 
terness enough. Out in the residence quarters of 
the cities, away off in the rural villages, among the 
farmhouses, where the individual warriors dwelt, the 
communities to which they hurried back when ranks 
were at last broken, sorrow reigned. Husbands, 
fathers, sons, brothers, who had gcMie forth in the 
l^rime of manhood, too often returned mere wrecks 
of their former selves; while oilier husbands, 



DEEDS OF VALOR. 329 

fathers, sons and brothers had been left upon 
Southern battle-fields or had died in the swamps or 
fallen victims to the wretched sanitary conditions 
of camps, transports and Confederate prison-pens. 
The Union had been saved at frightful cost. Yet, 
despite it all, there were none to say that the price 
paid for national honor and for the freedom of man 
had been too oreat. Had occasion demanded, 
there were none so stricken that they would not 
have freely renewed their terrible sacrifice. Spar- 
tans were never more devoted patriots than were 
the people of the North, even when nursing their 
greatest sorrow. They paused to weep over the 
ashes of their dead, only when the enemy had been 
crushed. The great struggle had developed a 
nation of heroes. In this development, Wisconsin 
nobly shared. 



CHAPTER XII. 



SINCE THE WAR. 








HE cost of the war to 
Wisconsin, in blood 
and treasure, had in- 
deed been great. Yet 
it is surprising how 
soon she recovered 
from the blow. The 
State was filled with 
rich mines, unused 
water-powers, virgin 
forests and fertile fields, which invited immigrants 
from the East and from Europe by tens of thou- 
sands. Fresh blood poured into every community, 
capital flowed to the West, new industries sj^rung 
up, more railroads were built, and very soon the 
commonwealth was making giant strides. The era 
of progress dawned, when the clouds of civil strife 
had disappeared from the horizon. 

The length of Wisconsin from north to south, is 
three hundred miles, while it is two hundred and 
fifty miles in breadth, and has a shore line of five 

330 



SINCE 7 HE WAR. 33 1 

hundred along the Great Lakes. It has few hills 
rising over four hundred feet above their bases, and 
they chiefly along the Wisconsin and Mississippi 
rivers ; the highest elevations are about eighteen 
hundred feet above the level of the, ocean, and the 
lowest portions of the State are six hundred. There 
are some two thousand minor lakes, nearly all of 
them in the eastern and northern portions, the 
result of glacial action ; numerous waterfalls also 
occur in those sections, many of them being used 
as power for the driving of machinery. The scen- 
ery of Wisconsin is never rugged, but abounds in 
pleasing effects. Gentle hill-slopes are freely inter- 
spersed with rolling prairies, and the numerous 
river valleys and lake basins add a charming 
variety to the landscape. The broad valleys of the 
Mississippi and Wisconsin are edged with bluffs 
often rising abruptly to a height of from two hun- 
dred to seven hundred feet, affording views to the 
canoeist sometimes comparable to those met on 
Lake George. Other rivers there are, where now 
the dark, dense forest closely hems in the glistening 
flood ; and now fair prairie-stretches or upland 
glades, bathed in mellow sunlight, gladden the eye 
of the voyager. Whether the traveler takes the 
waterway or the roadway, journeys through the low- 
lands, or views the State from the hilltops, beauty 
of landscape often greets his vision. 



332 SJACE THE WAR. 

In the central zone, tlierc is a large sandy area of 
comparatively low fertility; but elsewhere the soils 
are highly fertile and easily tilled. Originally, the 
greater part of the surface of tiie State was heavily 
forested, with prairies and groves in the southwest. 
The present forest area of the State is 48.8 per 
cent, of the whole. Hard timber prevails in the 
south ; the northern half of the State is given up 
to an almost unbroken forest of pine and kindred 
trees, with a free intermingling of hard woods. 
The climate is such as is usually found in interior 
territories, in the temperate zone ; but the prox- 
imity of the Great Lakes has the effect to elevate 
the temperature in winter and depress it in summer. 

Wisconsin's lumbering interests are especially im- 
portant, being only exceeded in value by those of 
Michigan and Pennsylvania. Railroads are push- 
ing through the forests in every direction, opening 
up new belts of woods, competing with the uncer- 
tain rivers for the transportation of logs and lumber, 
and creating a tendency to move the saw-mills 
nearer to the sources of supply. Operations are 
now chiefly carried on upon the St. Croix, Chippewa, 
Red Cedar, Yellow and Black, of those rivers emp- 
tying into the Upper Mississippi ; the Wisconsin, 
running through the center of the State, and the 
Wolf, Menomonee, Peshtigo and Oconto, pouring 
into Green Bay. Large numbers of men and an 



S/AC£ J BE IFAR. :^2)0 

immense capital are employed in this industry, and 
nearly all towns in Northern Wisconsin are at pres- 
ent chiefly dependent upon it for support. But the 
lumber business is necessarily of temporary endur- 
ance, and wasteful in its effect. As soon as one 
district has been denuded of its timber the lumber- 
men operating in it must pull up stakes and move to 
another; and the communities which have grown up 
in consequence of the early establishment of this 
industry in their neighborhood, must soon suffer 
decay or encourage new enterprises in their midst. 
Such original lumber towns as Oshkosh have been 
enabled to continue upon a prosperous plane after 
the decadence of their logging interests, by estab- 
lishing varied manufactures of a more permanent 
character. 

One of the sfreat danQ:ers arisino- from the build- 
ing of large towns in the heart of the forest is that 
of fires. Sometimes these communities are closely 
hemmed in by dense pine woods, stretching in 
every direction for scores or perhaps hundreds of 
miles. The buildings and sidewalks are generally 
of wood, and the streets are for the most part either 
planked or carpeted with sawdust; while almost 
invariably the low places have been filled in with 
saw-mill offal. In the midst of the heated season, 
after a lono- drouQ-ht, wdien the resinous forest and 
the wooden towns are highly inflammable, a spark 



334 SINCE THE IVAJ^. 

from a passing locomotive, or a saw-mill smoke- 
stack, or perhaps a stray brand from a hunter's 
camp-fire, may start the fatal blaze. Then it sweeps 
through the country with the besom of destruction. 
Forests and towns go down before it like chaff, and 
human beings have been swallowed up by hun- 
dreds in the merciless, leaping flames. Such dis- 
asters have been the fate of several Wisconsin 
communities in the northern woods. The most ap- 
palling of these horrors occurred during the eighth 
and ninth of October, 1S71. A forest conflagra- 
tion, one of the greatest in the history of the world, 
swept over portions of Oconto, Brown, Door, Sha- 
wano, Manitowoc and Kewaunee counties, con-' 
suming everything in its path. Over one thousand 
lives were lost, nearly as many persons were mis- 
erably crippled, and three thousand were beggared. 
The terrible casualty was felt most heavily at the 
town of Peshtigo, on the shores of lower Green Bay. 
Nearlv two hundred thousand dollars were raised 
for the sufferers, and expended understate control. 
Of late years, increased care upon the part of lum- 
bermen and railway companies has much lessened 
the number and extent of forest fires. 

Wisconsin's first American settlers were miners, 
who operated the lead and zinc region in the south- 
western portion of the State. The best leads were 
exhausted after a quarter of a ccnlur\- of working. 



SINCE THE WAR. 335 

and the industry then s?.nk into comparative insig- 
nificance. The discovery of lead in connection 
with the silver mines of the Rocky Mountains as- 
sisted in lowering the value of the Wisconsin 
product. 

Within the past few years, new finds have caused 
something of a revival in the lead and zinc interests 
of the State. In iron-mining, Wisconsin occupied 
in 1880 the sixth position among the States of the 
Union. The Huronian formation, in the Menomo- 
nee region and along the Montreal River, contains 
the most extensive iron deposits — the product of 
the entire range being eight hundred thousand tons 
in 1886. In the Montreal, or Gogebic range, there 
is a rich deposit of Bessemer ore. In 1886-87, 
there was a wild fever of speculation among the 
people of the State, in the stock of the Gogebic 
iron mines. Thousands of citizens, many of them 
occupying the highest official, professional and 
social positions, invested heavily in this paper. A 
few were shrewd enough to unload upon the 
rapidly-rising market and realized large profits ; 
but the majority were sadly bitten when the re- 
action came, in 1888. It was found that while 
there were several paying mines in the district, the 
bulk of the stock on the market was issued upon 
worthless holes in the ground. Legitimate oper- 
ators continue to make money in the region, and 



7,2,6 SJNCE TJIE WAR. 



now that tlic speculative craze is over, the business 
has settled into stea(!\-i;-oing channels. 

Nearly sixty thousand men are employed in the 
manufactories of the State, and nearly seventy-five 
million dollars are invested in them. According 
to the census of 1885, somewhat over twenty seven 
million dollars' worth of lumber, shingles and laths 
were turned out ; twenty million dollars' wortli of 
milling products; fourteen million dollars' worth 
of wooden articles ; over ten million dollars' worth 
of iron products and manufactures in iron ; nine 
million dollars in leather manufactures; five million 
dollars in wagons, carriages and sleighs ; and mis- 
cellaneous goods in proportion. In the one item 
of beer-making, there were brewed in Wisconsin 
during the twelve months ending the thirtieth of 
June, 1889, no less than 1,789,513 barrels, worth 
nearly eleven million dollars, and the business is 
steadily on the increase. The State stands fifth in 
this industry, being excelled in the order named, by 
New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois. The 
industry is chiefly centered in Milwaukee. The sales 
in that city alone, during the period mentioned, 
being 1,364,980 barrels, which were shipped to all 
parts of the civilized world. New 'York City, St. 
Louis and Chicago alone exceed this record. In 
the census vear of 18S0, the slaughtered animals 
and meat i)ackin':!, product were walued at nearly 



SINCE THE WAR. 337 

seven million dollars, and the manufacture of agri- 
cultural implements at nearly four million dollars. 
Remarkable progress has been made, and new 
manufactures are being continually introduced. 

There has been the usual number of labor 
troubles, in connection with Wisconsin manufac- 
turing. But few of these, however, have devel- 
oped into riots. In mid-summer, 1861, the men 
employed in the Eau Claire saw-mills, who had 
been accustomed to regard eleven hours as a day's 
work, suddenly struck for ten hours and would 
have carried out their threats of destruction to mill- 
properties had not the militia been called out and 
a bloodless peace secured. In May, 1886, the 
employes of the rolling mills and several other 
manufactories at Milwaukee and its industrial 
suburb, Bay View, struck to enforce the adoption 
of the eight-hour day. They carried matters with 
a high hand, and the militia, now well orQ:anized 
and equipped, was again summoned. This time, 
the mob was so unruly that it had to be fired 
upon with ball cartridges, seven persons being- 
killed and several wounded. In July, 1889, the 
State troops were sent to West Superior, to quell 
disorder on the part of striking employes of cer- 
tain street contractors and mill-owners. Quiet was 
finally restored without the necessity of repeating 
the lesson taught to the Milwaukee rioters. 



338 S/ACE THE WAR. 

Asrriculture is still the main resource of the Com- 
monvvealth. The State census of 1885 estimated 
that a third of a million persons were engaged in 
tilling the soil, while the value of farms and the 
year's agricultural products footed up to the enor- 
mous sum of $568,187,288. While considerable 
small-grain, corn, hay and miscellaneous field-crops 
are yet raised, the State is chiefly remarkable for 
its dairy products, which are now recognized as 
among the finest in the markets of the world, and 
are shipped in great quantities to the Eastern States 
and to Europe. Tobacco-raising is extensively en- 
gaged in, particularly in Dane and Rock Counties, 
there being some thirty thousand acres devoted to 
the narcotic weed. Several flourishins: towns in 
Southern Wisconsin, notably Edgerton and Stough- 
ton, derive a very considerable income from their 
large and numerous warehouses where the leaves 
are prepared and packed for market. The State 
also furnishes to the markets of the country large 
shipments of blueberries, chiefly picked by Indians 
in the sandy central zone ; and cranberries, which 
are raised on immense and carefully-cultivated 
marshes, particularly along the Fox and Black 
Rivers. 

With her five hundred miles of coast on the 
Great Lakes, the fisheries of Wisconsin are natu- 
rally important and capable of still greater devel- 



SINCE THE IVAR. 339 

opment. The lake-shore catch in 1888, amounted, 
principally in white fish and lake-trout, to nearly 
nine million pounds, valued at two hundred and sev- 
enty-one thousand dollars. Over six hundred men 
are engaged in the business, and the value of the 
property employed amounts to somewhat over a 
third of a million dollars. The fisheries on the 
inland lakes and rivers, where bass, pike, pickerel, 
sturgeon and brook-trout abound, give recreation 
and amusement to the people and form one of the 
attractions which draw to Wisconsin each summer 
scores of thousands of tourists from the Eastern 
and Southern States. The fishino- interests are 
under the control of a State commission, which 
conducts large establishments at Madison and Mil- 
waukee for the artificial propagation ot trout, wall- 
eyed pike, carp, land-locked salmon and white fish. 
The bays of the Great Lakes are annually stocked 
with white fish and the inland waters with the 
other varieties named. 

Railways have, since the war, been built with 
marvelous rapidity throughout Wisconsin in every 
direction, and there are now few localities, even in 
the deepest forests, that are many miles from a 
station. On the thirty-first of December, 1889, 
there were fifty-three hundred and ninety miles 
of railroad operated within the State, the leading 
lines being the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, the 



340 SINCE 'Jill'. WAN. 

Chicag(i L^' Ndrtliwcstcrn, the Wisconsin Central, 
the Chicaeo, St. Paul, Minnea])oHs & Omaha, the 
Milwaukee, Lake Shore & Superior, the Minne- 
apolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie, the Milwaukee 
& Northern, the Chicago, l)urlington & Northern, 
and the (ireen Hay, Winona & St. Paul. The story 
of the first inception of some of these modern 
hio-hways of civilization has been elsewhere told. 
They met their first serious check in 1S74, when 
the legislature j^assed what was popularly called 
" the Potter law." This act undertook to regulate 
the railroads by establishing fixed freight and pas- 
senger charges, and by providing for a board of 
three railway commissioners to enforce the man- 
date of the State. The legislature adjourned on the 
thirteenth of March. Upon the twenty-seventh of 
April, the presidents of the two principal roads, the 
" St. Paul " and the " Northwestern," oflficially in- 
formed Governor Taylor — who had been elected 
on a " Reform," or " Anti-monopoly " ticket — that 
their respective corporations would disobey the law. 
Thereupon, the authorities of the Commonwealth 
asked the State suprenie court for leave to bring 
suits for the forfeiture of the charters of the dis- 
obedient lines. This permission was promptly 
granted by the court, and action was commenced 
by the State in the nature of a quo ivarranto to 
vacate their charters and annul their existence. 



SINCE THE WAR. 34 1 

The companies contended that the arbitrary rates 
fixed by the law would " amount to confiscation, as 
the working expenses could scarcely be paid under 
it," and at once adhered to their former rates. The 
governor issued a proclamation calling upon the 
rebellious corporations to peaceably submit to the 
statute, otherwise all the functions of his office would 
be exercised to the end that the law be faithfully 
executed. Here was open war between the State 
and the railroads, and public interest reached a high 
pitch of excitement. At this point, an injunction 
was applied for in the United States district court 
at Madison, in the name of the creditors of the 
Northwestern railway — who claimed that their 
securities were weakened or destroyed by the Pot- 
ter law — to restrain the State from institutino- 
fixed tariffs. In June, the case came up in the 
United States court, and a month later, after an 
elaborate legal contest, the court, so far as the 
motion was concerned, sustained the validity of the 
law; but as there was still further involved a nice 
constitutional question relative to the regulation of 
commerce between States, the decision was not 
final, the case being left open for further argument. 
Meanwhile, the State supreme court was asked 
by the attorney-general to enjoin the companies 
ao^ainst further disobedience of the law. Another 
long legal fight ensued, which attracted national 



342 SINCE THE WAR. 

attention, witli the result that on tlie twenty-fifth 
of September, Chief Justice Ryan announced the 
decision of the court, sustaining the Potter law and 
the right of the State to control corporations within 
its limits. The writs of injunction were issued, but 
the attorney-general was instructed not to prosecute 
the companies for forfeiture of their charters until 
the latter were given a reasonable time to arrange 
their rates of toll under the law. The companies 
thereupon submitted, beaten at every point; but 
the law was subsequently modified by the legisla- 
ture, and since that day the relations between the 
railways and the State have been without serious 
friction. 

The population of Wisconsin aggregates about 
one million, seven hundred thousand. Originally 
settled by the French fur-traders and their engages^ 
there was no sensible growth until the arrival of 
Americans in the lead mines, about the year 1825. 
These came from Southern Illinois, Missouri and 
Kentucky, and introduced a small element of negro 
slaves as servants and mini no- hands. The aoricul- 
tural colonists and early professional men who rushed 
into Wisconsin upon the close of the Black Hawk 
War, in 1832, were chiefly from New England and 
the intervening Eastern States. A heavy immigra- 
tion from the more densely populated sections of the 
Union has ever since been maintained ; but it was 



SINCE THE WAR. 343 

not long before Wisconsin came to be regarded 
with peculiar favor by emigrants from European 
countries, particularly Germany and Scandinavia; 
even before the Civil War the State had attracted 
general attention because of its large element of 
foreign-born citizens. Since the war, this feature 
has become more strongly marked than ever. In 
1880, the national census disclosed the presence in 
the State of enough foreign-born people to number 
30.81 per cent, of the entire population, and the 
census of 1890 somewhat increased this ratio. As 
a large number of the immigrants are men, it is 
probable that about one half of the voters of the 
Commonwealth are of foreign birth. The principal 
nationalities now colonized within the State, rank 
in strength as follows : Germans, Scandinavians, 
Irish, natives of Great Britain, Canadians, Bohe- 
mians, Hollanders and French. 

Wisconsin probably contains a greater variety of 
foreign groups than any other American State. 
Many of these occupy entire townships, and control 
within them all political, educational and ecclesias- 
tical affairs. There are, here and there, genuine 
communities where property is held in common and 
strangers are carefully excluded, such as the St. 
Nazian Roman Catholic community, in Manitowoc 
County, where there are men of all essential trades 
and professions, and no communication is held with 



344 SINCE THE ir.iA'. 

the outer world if it can be prevented. In con- 
siderable districts, particularly among the Germans 
and Welsh, the English language is seldom spoken, 
and public as well as parochial schools are con- 
ducted in the foreign tongue. But as a rule, the for- 
eign-born people of Wisconsin are quick to adopt 
American methods and English speech, and enter 
with zest into the privileges and duties of citizen- 
ship ; while no matter how zealously the elders may 
endeavor to perpetuate the foreign ideas which 
they have brought with them, the younger genera- 
tion cannot long be held in leash, complaint being 
universal that the teachings of the fathers in these 
matters appear to have but little effect upon the 
youth. The process of assimilation is as a whole 
reasonably rapid. There are those who fear that 
Wisconsin is becoming denationalized because of 
her large and conservative foreign population, but 
a careful study of the situation will not, I think, 
warrant any observer in such a conclusion. New 
customs, new manners and new blood are being 
introduced by these colonists from across seas, but 
they are in most cases worthy of adoption and 
absorption. We are slowly building up in America 
a composite nationality that is neither English nor 
continental, Init j).irtakes of all — it is to be hoped 
the best of all. 

It is inUTc^tiu''- to note the loralities where 







PICTURESQUE MILWAUKEE, 



SINCE THE IVAR. 345 

these foreign groups have planted themselves in 
Wisconsin. 

The Germans number seventy-five per cent, of 
the population of Taylor County, sixty-five per cent, 
of Dodge, and fifty-five per cent, of Buffalo. They 
are also found in especially large groups in Mil- 
waukee, Ozaukee, Washington, Sheboygan, Mani- 
towoc, Jefferson, Outagamie, Fond du Lac, Sauk, 
Waupaca, Dane, Marathon, Grant, Waushara, 
Green Lake, Langlade and Clark counties. There 
are Germans in every county of the State, and 
numerous isolated German settlements, but in the 
counties named these people are particularly nu- 
merous. Sometimes the groups are of special in- 
terest because the people came for the most part 
from a particular district in the Fatherland. For 
instance, Lomira, in Dodge County, was settled al- 
most entirely by Prussians from Brandenburg, who 
beloneed to the Evans^elical Association. The 
neighboring towns of Herman and Theresa, also in 
Dodge County, were settled principally by natives 
of Pomerania. In Calumet County, there are 
Oldenburg, Luxemburg and New Holstein settle- 
ments. St. Kilian, in Washington County, is set- 
tled by people from Northern Bohemia, just over 
the German border. The town of Belgium, Ozau- 
kee County, is populated almost exclusively by 
Luxemburgers, while Oldenburgers occupy the 



346 SINCE THE WAR. 

German settlement at Ccdarburg. Three fourths 
of the population of Farmington, Washington 
County, are from Saxony. In the same county, 
Jackson is chiefly settled by Pomeranians, while 
one half of the population of Kewaskum are from 
the same German province. In Dane County, there 
are several interesting groups of German Catholics : 
the town of Roxbury is nine tenths German, the 
people coming mostly from Rhenish Prussia and 
Bavaria ; Germans predominate in Cross Plains, 
the rest of the population being Irish ; the Ger- 
man families of Middleton came from Koln, Rhen- 
ish Prussia, and so did those of Berry, a town 
almost solidly German. Austrians are numerous 
in Kewaunee County. 

The Polanders are wide-spread. In the cities 
of Milwaukee and Manitowoc, there are large 
masses of them. In the city and neighborhood of 
Beaver Dam, Dodge County, there are nine hun- 
dred Poles, mostly from Posen, Germany. In Ber- 
lin and its neighborhood are one thousand, two 
hundred from Danzig, and emigration from thence 
is still in active progress. There are two Polish 
churches in Berlin, and one Polish school in which 
that language is taught. Other solid Polish groups 
are found in the townships of Berlin, Seneca and 
Princeton. Warren township, in Waushara County, 
has a considerable colony of Poles, and others can 



SINCE THE IVAI^. 347 

be found in Trempealeau, Door, Kewaunee, Por- 
tage, Marathon, Langlade and Buffalo counties. 

Bohemians are settled for the most part in the 
counties of Kewaunee (where they form three sev- 
enths of the entire population), Marathon, Adams, 
Crawford, Grant (towns of Muscoda and Castle 
Rock), Columbia (Lodi), Trempealeau, Langlade 
and Washington (part of Wayne). 

We find Belgians closely massed in the towns of 
Gardiner, Union and Brussels, in Door County; 
Red River and a large part of Lincoln, in Kewau- 
nee County, and in Brown County. 

The Dutch have particularly strong settlements 
in the Northeastern portion of the State, in the 
city of Milwaukee and in La Crosse County. The 
first colony was settled in Hollandtown, Sheboygan 
County, where natives of Holland still own one 
fourth of the township. They own one half of Bar- 
ton, in Washington County. Alto, Fond du Lac 
County, is essentially a Dutch town. A consider- 
able stronghold is the town of Kaukauna, Outa- 
gamie County, and the Dutch own much of Depere 
and Belleville, Brown County. The city of Mil- 
waukee had, as early as 1849, a Dutch population 
of more than eight hundred, which has since greatly 
increased. There is a large settlement of Frisians 
in Holland township, La Crosse County, their vil- 
lage being knov/n as New Amsterdam. 



34^ SINCE TIIK WAR. 

The Scandinavians (Norwegians, Swedes, Danes 
and Icelanders) of Wisconsin, are divided into na- 
tional groups. The Norwegians are strongest in 
Dane County, where there are probably not less 
than fourteen thousand who were either born in 
Norway or whose parents were. Other counties 
having large numbers, are Pierce, St. Croix, Eau 
Claire, Waushara, W^aupaca, Washburn, Winne- 
bago, Portage, Buffalo, Trempealeau, Barron, Door, 
Bayfield, Florence, Lincoln, Rock, Racine, Mil- 
waukee, Grant and Oneida. Swedes predominate 
in Trenton, Isabel and Maiden Rock, in Pierce 
County; and are strong in j^ortions of Bayfield, 
Douglas, Price, Taylor, Door, Jackson and Por- 
tage counties. Danes are found in considerable 
groups in Adams, Milwaukee, Racine and Wau- 
shara counties. Icelanders practically monopolize 
Washington Island (Door County), in the waters of 
Green Bay. Finlanders are quite strongly grouped 
in Douglas County. 

There are between five and six thousand Swiss 
massed in exceptionally prosperous colonies in New 
Glarus, Washington, lixetcr, Mt. Pleasant, York and 
neighboring townships in Green County. Others 
may be found in the counties of Buffalo, Pierce 
(Union), Winnebago (Black Wolf), and Fond du 
Lac (Ashford). 

Italian groups are noted in Vernon, Washburn 



SINCE THE IVAJi. 349 

and Florence counties. In Vernon, they hold one 
half of Genoa township. 

Russians, both Greek-church adherents and Jews, 
are chiefly found in the city of Milwaukee. Of the 
Greek-church Russians, there are two thousand in 
number, living on one street in a densely-settled 
neighborhood, and said to be mainly engaged in 
peddling small wares. The Russian Jews are scat- 
tered throughout the city ; they observe their old 
social customs with religious tenacity, but are 
allowing their children to become Americanized. 

The principal French-Canadian settlements are 
in Bayfield, Crawford, Lincoln, St. Croix and Tay- 
lor Counties, not counting the French Creoles at 
Green Bay, Kaukauna and Prairie du Chien. 

Large English settlements — several of them the 
result of the early immigration of Cornish miners 
into the lead regions of Southwestern Wisconsin 
— can be found in Iowa, Grant, Lafayette, Co- 
lumbia, Juneau and Dane counties. 

The Scotch we find in considerable numbers in 
Columbia, Buffalo, Green Lake, Kenosha, Mara- 
thon and Trempealeau counties. 

The Welsh are planted upon Wisconsin soil in 
large groups. In Waushara County, the town of 
Springwater, one half of the town of Rose and 
one half of Aurora are occupied by natives of 
Wales and their immediate descendants. Spring 



350 SIXC/': 7'HE WAR. 

Green, in Sauk County, lias a large colony of them. 
The whole of Nekimi and the greater part of 
Utica, in Winnebago County, are settled by this 
people ; so are Caledonia and other townships in 
Columbia County, and the town of Calamus in 
Dodge. Monroe County has many solid Welsh 
neighborhoods, and other compact groups are 
in the third and sixth wards of Racine. 

Irish groups are found in Bear Creek, Winfield 
and Dellona, in Sauk County ; Osceola, Eden and 
Byron, in Fond du Lac County; Benton, Darling- 
ton, Gratiot, Kendall, Seymour, Shullsburg and 
Willow Spring, in Lafayette County; Lebanon, in 
Waupaca County; Erin, in Washington County; 
El Paso, in Pierce County; and Emmet, Shields 
and Portland, in Dodge County. It is worthy of 
note that the Germans, who are gaining steadily 
all along the line, have frequently displaced large 
bodies of Irish settlers in the southeastern portions 
of the State. 

The chief city of Wisconsin is Milwaukee, with 
a, population of about two hundred and three 
thousand, which is increasing rapidly. It com- 
mands an extensive lake commerce, is an impor- 
tant railway center, and has large industries, par- 
ticularly breweries, iron works, shoe factories and 
tanneries. Its school system is based upon the 
best modern methods, the public buildings and 



SINCE THE WAR. 351 

many of the business structures are superb ; the 
Layton Art Gallery contains one of the choicest 
collections of paintings to be found west of the 
Alleghanies ; music and literature are carefully 
fostered ; its people are noted for public spirit, 
vigor and push in their various enterprises; there 
are numerous fine parks and noble drives, and the 
city enjoys the reputation of being one of the most 
healthful and beautiful residence towns in America. 

Oshkosh and La Crosse, the former with twenty- 
two thousand people, and the latter with twenty- 
five, have for many years been in close rivalry. 
Both are as yet essentially lumber towns, but both 
are gradually emerging from that stage, now that 
lumbering is on the decline, and are becoming mis- 
cellaneous manufacturing centers. Both were origi- 
nally famous rendezvous grounds for aborigines, 
and later were French fur-trading points, finally 
developing into thrifty American settlements. 

Eau Claire, with twenty-four thousand, is almost 
entirely dependent upon the lumbering industry for 
support. Racine, having a population of twenty- 
one thousand, has varied manufacturing interests, 
chiefly in iron, lumber and agricultural machinery, 
and is enjoying a prosperous growth, being practi- 
cally a factory suburb of Chicago. Fond du Lac 
has twelve thousand people within its limits. It 
is one of the oldest settlements in the State, and 



352 SI ACE THE WAR. 

attained its best growth as a lunil^er-manufacturing 
and iron-smelting town. After a })eri()d of decad- 
ence, it is now u})on the upward path, with mis- 
cellaneous manufactures as a backing, in which, 
sash and door mills, wagon shops, iron-working 
and the making of agricultural machinery chiefly 
fijjure. 

Madison, with thirteen thousand inhabitants, is 
the State capital and is a conservative town, ha\^- 
ing a steady but not rapid growth. The State 
university is located here, and this and various 
other schools, })ublic and private, attract a con- 
siderable number of teachers and pupils. There 
are large libraries in the town, which draw special 
students from many quarters. The presence of 
the State Q:overnment and the several State and 
United States courts, has also a bearing upon the 
character of the population. Madison is the 
political, educational and literary center of the 
Commonwealth, is an important railway center 
and contains a few industrial j^lants, chiefly in the 
line of agricultural machinery and the printing of 
books for publishers in several of the large West- 
ern cities. Situated in the heart of the famous 
Four Lake country, summer tourists gather here 
in great numbers. Many people of assured but 
moderate incomes ]:)ermanently locate in Madison 
because of its educational advantages, the preva- 



SINCE THE WAR. 353 

lent high social and literary tone, and the beauty 
of the city and its surroundings. 

Sheboygan, with seventeen thousand people, is 
noted for its manufacture of fine dairy products and 
various articles of wooden ware, particularly chairs. 

Janesville is a fast-growing city, with cotton, 
woolen and other mills, and a prosperous country 
trade. 

Appleton houses thirteen thousand people, and 
is a bright, flourishing manufacturing community. 
Along its water-powers are planted pulp, paper 
and grist mills, while iron foundries and miscella- 
neous factories are numerous. It is the seat of 
Lawrence University, is a beautiful residence place, 
and society there takes unto itself much of the 
spirit of the traditional college town. 

Beloit is another pretty college town, and a com- 
munity of delightful homes. Kenosha, Sheboygan 
and Manitowoc are towns along Lake Michigan, 
which have lumbering, fishing and other interests, 
together with a healthy lake commerce. Neenah 
is known the country over, for her great fiouring 
mills and charming summer resorts. Waukesha, 
with her world-famous mineral springs ; Oconomo- 
woc, Pewaukee and Geneva, with their beautiful 
lakes ; and Sparta, deep set in the western hills, 
with her fountains of magnetic water, attract tour- 
ists and invalids from all portions of the land. 



354 S/AC£ THE U'AK. 

Ashland, the most popular of all Lake Superior 
resorts, is quite as noted within the State for her 
lumber mills, and as being the shipping point for 
the Gogebic iron mines. Merrill, \\\iusau, Stevens 
Point, Chippewa Falls and Hudson are typical 
lumber towns, each conscious of a brilliant future 
and alive with the bustle of the world. The Su- 
periors, particularly West Superior, which is just 
at present Wisconsin's pet " boom town," are com- 
ing to the front with seven-league boots and prom- 
ise to soon outrival Duluth. Everywhere along 
the line of Badger cities, there is abundant enter- 
prise and commendable progress. 

Few States in the Union contain as many In- 
dians as Wisconsin, In 1889 there were 9,243, 
not counting the civilized Brothertowns and Stock- 
bridges who own and work their own farms in 
Calumet County, and have been admitted to full 
citizenship. In the Green Bay agency, whose res- 
ervations are at Keshena and Duck Creek, are the 
Oneidas (1,713) and the Stockbridges (138), who 
are remnants of the New York Indians who immi- 
grated to Wisconsin in the time of Eleazer Wil- 
liams; and the Menomonees (1,469), who are de- 
scendants of the " Folles Avoines " who escorted 
Nicolet to Green Bay, who listened to the preach- 
ing of Allouez at Depere, helped Langlade ensnare 
the soldiers of Braddock, rallied under the banner 



SINCE THE WAR. 355 

of France on the Plains of Abraham, and followed 
Hamilton to attack George Rogers Clark at Vin- 
cennes — the tribe whose chieftains were name- 
divers to the cities of Oshkosh and Tomah. 

The La Pointe agency has reservations at Lac 
du Flambeau, Lac Court d'Oreilles, Bad River and 
Red Cliff, in which there are gathered nearly five 
thousand Chippewas, the mightiest hunters of early 
Wisconsin, and the best-formed and most intelli- 
gent of the lot — offspring of the men whom Rad- 
isson and Groseilliers, and Marquette and Allouez 
found at La Pointe in the seventeenth century ; 
and a small band of Pottawatomies, whose fathers 
once held sway over Southeastern Wisconsin and 
were the tribesmen of Shaubena. 

Another band of Pottawatomies, three hundred 
in number, living along the upper waters of the 
Wisconsin River, are homesteaders, not under 
agency rule. The Winnebagoes, poorest, meanest 
and most ill-visaged of Wisconsin Indians, are also 
homesteaders, living chiefly upon the sandy pine 
barrens in Adams, Jackson and Waushara counties. 

Two notable attempts have been made by the 
United States Government to remove the Win- 
nebagoes from the State. In 1848, they were 
taken at considerable expense to a reservation at 
Long Prairie, Minn,, but most of them stole away 
to their haunts in Wisconsin before the return 



356 SINCE TJIK WAR. 

of the commissioners who had accompanied them 
tliithcr. The small proportion who remained at 
Long Prairie were afterwards moved to Mankato, 
Minn.; thence to the Crow and Creek reservations, 
up the Missouri River, and finally were floated 
down the Missouri to Dakota County, Neb., their 
present reservation. 

In the winter of 1S73, there was another attempt 
to move the Winnebagoes from Wisconsin. Run- 
ners were sent out through the woods to give 
the Indians notice to rendezvous at Sparta, to be 
shipped to Nebraska. But preferring their native 
woods and streams, and their free-and-easy gypsy 
life, to the sun-scorched reservation and the trials 
and turmoils of life in an agency, they declined 
to come in. Military assistance was then sum- 
moned by the removal agent, and those of the 
Winnebagoes who did not succeed in hiding were 
soon gathered at Sparta, but not without many in- 
stances of rough treatment on the part of some of 
the captors, and undue exposure to the weather of 
children, and old people who were unable to walk 
through the deep snows and had to be carried on 
sleds. Some of the Indians employed an attorney 
who vainly sought to free them on writs of habeas 
corpus, and much popular symj)ath\- for the red 
men was created. 

Several hundred Indians were successfully re- 



SINCE THE WAR. 357 

moved, but as nictny more evaded pursuit and re- 
mained. Since that, there has been no serious 
effort to remove them; and in 1883 the Winne- 
bao-oes remainino- in the State were oblioed to take 
up homesteads, and now receive a government 
annuity of about fifteen dollars per head. There 
are some fifteen hundred of them still in the State, 
which is about the number now on the Nebraska 
reservation. 

The reservation Indians in Wisconsin manage 
to pick up a living from farming, milling, the sale 
of their standing timber to lumbermen, and the 
receipt of small government annuities. The wan- 
derino: Winnebas^oes raise enouo^h corn for their 
own use ; fish and hunt throughout Southern Wis- 
consin, in the winter and spring; receive their an- 
nuities in the fall ; gather blueberries upon the 
wild lands of Central Wisconsin and sell them to 
packers at Black River Falls, Tomah and other 
stations, where they are crated and shipped to 
Chicago in large quantities; and pick cranberries 
on hire, for the owners of great cultivated marshes 
in the Black River and neighboring valleys. They 
are all of them — Menomonees, New York Indians, 
Chippewas, Pottawatomies and Winnebagoes alike 
— a simple-minded, improvident people who live 
from hand to mouth, either feasting or starving, yet 
managing to hold their own as to population, and 



o3 



8 SINCE TJIE WAR. 



apparently making no progress toward the stage of 
civilization. 

Although most of them are tinged with white 
blood, that condition is largely a relic of the early 
fur-trading days, when the woods were filled with 
Frenchmen who were in hail-fellowship with the 
red barbarians. Under the American regime^ in- 
termarriages are few, not being countenanced by 
either race ; so that in the formation of our com- 
posite nationality — for the study of which Wiscon- 
sin is so interesting a field — the Indian appears to 
play no part. 

The provisions made for the education of the 
children of the Commonwealth are liberal, $3,803,- 
487 being expended for public educational pur- 
poses in 1889. The national government granted 
the State, as a school fund, section sixteen in each 
township, and five hundred thousand acres of land, 
besides five per cent, of the proceeds of the sale of 
public lands within the State. This, with some 
other items, goes to make up the general school 
fund. The income from this is supplemented by 
a State tax of one mill on the dollar. The com- 
bined amount, aggregating $770,913.52 in 18S9, is 
apportioned each year among the towns, villages 
and cities in proportion to the number of children, 
over four years and under twenty, residing in dis- 
tricts which maintain schools for six or more 



SINCE THE WAR. 359 

months, as required by law. In addition to this, 
the State grants fifty thousand dollars yearly, in 
aid of free high schools. 

Each town, village and city must raise a tax for 
its local schools, at least equal to the amount re- 
ceived from the State the preceding year. In 1889, 
there were 567,683 persons of school age, of whom 
about sixty per cent, were enrolled in the public 
schools. But the fact should be taken into con- 
sideration that in Wisconsin the school age is far- 
reaching. Practically the majority of children go 
to school when between seven and fourteen years, 
which are the limits of compulsory attendance. 
Of the children between these ages, fully eighty 
per cent, are enrolled in the public schools, and the 
greater portion of the balance may be found in the 
parochial or private schools. 

The district, ward, high and normal schools are 
under the charge of the State, the system of popu- 
lar education being crowned by the State Univer- 
sity at Madison. This institution was organized 
at the time Wisconsin entered the Union, in 1848. 
While deriving some aid from the general govern- 
ment — in consideration of its training its pupils 
in military tactics and conducting an agricultural 
experiment station — the chief income of the Uni- 
versity is now derived from a State tax of one 
eighth of a mill on the dollar. 



360 SINCE -JJ/Ji II. IK. 



The college year of 1890-91, showed an attend- 
ance of about eiL;ht hundred pupils in all of the 
departments, which include a college of law, schools 
of pharmacy and mining, railroad and electrical 
enoineerino;, and short and lonir courses in a^ricul- 
ture, in addition to the usual academic and scien- 
tific courses. The grounds of the University are 
upon a rolling ridge of land along the shores of 
Lake Mendota, and are not excelled in natural 
beauty by those of any college in America. 

The institution passed through some critical 
periods, in its earlier years, before the people of the 
State became educated to an appreciation of its 
importance; but it has now passed that stage, and 
to-^day is rc^cognized by every intelligent citizen as 
worthy of the liberal support which is now awarded 
it. The buildings and equipments are among the 
best in the Mississippi basin, and the quality of 
the work performed is unexcelled among the State 
universities of the country. The regents of the 
University have under their charge two important 
branches of work which are popular extensions of 
the University system; a teachers' institute lecture- 
ship, and farmers' institutes. 

The system of farmers' institutes is unique in 
Wisconsin. The regents, represented by an expert 
superintendent, hold institutes at various j)laces 
throuo-hout the Slate — about fiflN' in number, be- 



SINCE THE WAR. 361 

tween the months of November and April inclu- 
sive — at which the farmers who are in attendance 
are instructed in the various branches of ao^ricult- 
ure, by means of lectures, discussions and exhibi- 
tions of -appliances and methods. 

The sum of twelve thousand dollars per year is 
appropriated by the legislature for this purpose. 
Some of the best experts in the country are em- 
ployed as lecturers and leaders in discussion, and 
the attendance is invariably large and enthusiastic. 
A traveling agricultural college, brought to the 
homes of the people, it has not only had the effect 
to create great popular interest in the rural com- 
munities, to develop local talent, and to lead to the 
introduction of improved systems of farming, but 
there is already noticeable, as a direct outgrowth 
of this important educational awakening, a re- 
newed concern in the proper conduct of the district 
schools, and an enlarged conception of the useful- 
ness of the State University. The farmers' insti- 
tutes are causing the farmers to think, and think 
rightly. The intellectual and material benefits al- 
ready noticeable, direct and indirect, must, under 
a continuance of the present wise management, in- 
crease as the years go on. 

The principal Protestant denominational col- 
leges in Wisconsin are at Beloit (Congregational, 
established in 1S46), Appleton (Lawrence Univer- 



362 SJA'CE 'J HE llAK. 



sity, Methodist, 1847), Ripon (Congregational, 
1853), Racine (Protestant Episcopal, 1852), Milton 
(Seventh-Day Baptist, 1844), Fox Lake (Downer 
Female College, Congregational and Presbyterian, 
1853), Watertown (Northwestern University, Lu- 
theran, 1865) and Waukesha (Carroll College, Pres- 
byterian, 1846). The Milwaukee College (1848) is 
unsectarian, and for women only. The Catholics 
support Pio Nono (1871) at St. Francis; Marquette 
(Jesuit, 1864) at Milwaukee, and Saint Clara (1S48) 
at Sinsinawa Mound, besides numerous academies. 
Anions: Wisconsin's notable institutions, is the 
State Historical Society. Born in 1849, and pass- 
ing through many an early crisis, it stands to-day 
without a rival west of the Alleghanies, as an 
agency for the gathering and preservation of mate- 
rials for Western history. It has — largely through 
the efforts of Lyman C. Draper, who was secre- 
tary for thirty-two years — accumulated a reference 
library of one hundred and thirty-five thousand 
volumes, the best and largest scholars' library in 
the Mississippi basin ; and in its leading specialty, 
Americana, is only excelled by the library of Har- 
vard College and the New York State library at 
Albany. Its library, museum, portrait gallery, and 
offices occupy three floors of the large south wing 
of the State House, at Madison, and it is estimated 
that forty thousand ])ers()ns visit the museum 



SINCE THE WAR. 363 

annually. The Society is the chartered trustee of 
the Commonwealth, and is in correspondence with 
the leading learned institutions of America and 
Europe. The library is a favorite haunt for the 
students of the State University, and is resorted 
to by literary workers from all parts of the West. 
The University itself has a general library of six- 
teen thousand volumes ; and the State Law Library 
of twenty thousand volumes, also in the Capitol, and 
open to the students of the University law school, 
is one of the largest of its class in the West. 

Wisconsin's State charitable, reformatory and 
penal institutions, under the care of the State Board 
of Supervision, consist of two insane hospitals (near 
Madison and Oshkosh) having a joint population, 
the first of August, 1890, of one thousand one hun- 
dred and twenty-three ; the School for the Deaf, 
at Delavan, with one hundred and eighty-four in- 
mates ; the School for the Blind, at Janesville, 
eighty-one ; the Industrial School for Boys, at Wau- 
kesha, four hundred and twenty-three; the State 
Prison, at Waupun, five hundred and twenty-four, 
and the State Public School, at Sparta, two hun- 
dred and sixty-seven. The Industrial School for 
Girls, at Milwaukee, with two hundred inmates, 
and the Milwaukee Hospital for the Insane, with 
two hundred and forty-nine, are also assisted by 
the State. The State' Public School is in imita- 



364 SJACE THE WAR. 

tion of the Michigan institution bcarini; the same 
name. It receives dependent cliildren who would 
otherwise generally go to the poor-houses. These 
children are placed for rearing, as soon as possible, 
in private families where they are looked after by a 
State agent appointed for the purpose. In Wis- 
consin, no children are allowed to be brought up 
in poor-houses. 

The State Board of Charities and Reform has 
visitorial powers over all institutions — private or 
public, State, county or munici})al — where the 
dependent or criminal classes are cared for or con- 
fined. The Hoard has especial charge of a unique 
system of open-door county asylums for chronic 
insane, inaugurated in 1881. There are now 
twenty of these institutions, and the number is 
gradually increasing; the aggregate number of in- 
mates on the first day of August, 1890, was one 
thousand seven hundred and nine. None of them 
has capacity for over one Inmdrcd, an essential 
feature of the plan being, small as)'lums on large 
farms, thus providing opportunity for libert\- and 
occupation. Much more than three fourths of the 
inmates have some regular daily labor, and over 
two fifths are employed the entire day. \\\' thus 
keeping the minds of the insane occupied with 
their work, the amount of mechanical restraint and 
seclusion combined is less than one tenth of one 



SINCE THE WAR. 365 

per cent.; in other words, about one inmate in a 
thousand is under restraint each day, in the Wis- 
consin county asylums. The doors of these asy- 
lums stand open all day long, and every inmate 
has liberty to go in and out at pleasure, if remain- 
ing in the vicinity of the buildings, while fully one 
half are on parole to go anywhere, without an at- 
tendant. The cost of maintenance under this hu- 
mane system is greatly reduced by the products of 
the farm raised by the aid of insane labor ; while, 
such are the beneficent mental and physical effects 
of liberty and occupation, that a considerable num- 
ber of the alleged chronic insane absolutely recover 
and the condition of all is greatly improved. The 
State Board of Charities and Reform exercises 
close and active supervision over these county in- 
stitutions ; the buildings must be constructed on 
plans approved by the Board, and unless an asylum 
has the Board's certificate that it has been properly 
managed during the year, it cannot draw the State 
aid so essential to its existence. The Board has 
power to transfer to the county asylums chronic 
insane patients from the State hospitals and other 
places ; and it has exercised its authority to thus 
transfer a large number from jails and poor-houses, 
and also from private families where they were im- 
properly treated. To-day, there are only about 
twenty insane persons in the poor-houses of the 



o 



66 STANCE Tlfli WAR. 



State, and none in tlie jails. Tliis Wisconsin 
method of caring for the chronic insane, gave rise 
when first introduced to sharp criticism from spe- 
cialists in other States; but eight years of experi- 
ence has convinced the critics that it has accom- 
plished all that was claimed for it. While several 
county asylums have been inaugurated in other 
States, nowhere else is there exercised that efficient 
State control which is the life of the Wisconsin 
method. Wisconsin provides a comfortable home 
for every insane person within her borders, and 
has room to spare in her institutions ; I am im- 
formed by those who should know, that this can be 
truthfully said of no other State in the Union. 

The Wisconsin Veterans' Home, at Waupaca, is 
another institution which has some unique features. 
It is managed by the Wisconsin department of the 
Grand Army of the Republic, but is liberally aided 
by the State. Conducted on the cottage plan, its 
present capacity is for two hundred inmates. Not 
only are indigent loyal veterans of the War of 
Secession cared for, but the wives and widows of 
soldiers are also received, and to each couple is 
assiq;ned a neat two-room cottaq-e. The location 
of the Home is healthful and beautiful. 

There are also in Wisconsin the usual number 
of orphan asylums, h()si)itals, homes for the aged 
and other private bcnex'oKnt institutions, which 



SINCE THE WAR. 367 

are for the most part under ecclesiastical control ; 
all, however, are regularly inspected and reported 
upon by the State Board of Charities and Reform. 

The historic Northwest will ere Ions;; be recoe- 
nized as the chief seat of political interest in the 
American Union. It is here that wealth and politi- 
cal power are fast centering; here that the largest 
measure of progress and prosperity is to be found ; 
here that the strens^th of the nation is beino^ cren- 
erated; here that the most intricate problems of 
modern statesmanship are to be solved. In this 
approaching ascendancy of the Northwest, Wis- 
consin may be relied upon to play an important 
part. With a romantic and inspiring history, 
reaching through two and a half centuries ; with a 
population embracing some of the best elements 
of the Caucasian race ; with abundant natural re- 
sources ; with wealth, enterprise and culture ; situ- 
ated at the key-point between the two greatest 
water systems on the continent ; lined with busy 
railroads ; her cities bustling with varied indus- 
tries ; imbued with the spirit of nineteenth-century 
progress, Wisconsin is destined to become one of 
the greatest of American States, as it is already 
one of the most healthful, beautiful and fertile. 




^L ,.-! jN 0\ IX Ss 










\ v., ( ^v.' ^V>-<^-.-g^- A 



THE STORY OF WISCONSIN 

TOLD IN CHRONOLOGICAL EPITOME. 

Mountains as lofty as the Himalayas of our day are thought to have 
occupied the plains of Central Wisconsin while but little else of the American 
continent had yet risen from the ancient ocean, and while most of Europe 
was still submerged. Interesting thus early in her career, Wisconsin has, 
since the coming of man, been the theater of events which have their value 
to the archaeologist, ethnologist and historian. 

THE ERA OF HECINNINGS. 

All over Wisconsin, particularly along the shores of her lakes, great and 
small, upon her river benches and crowning the summits of her rugged hill- 
tops, are the curious earth-works which we ascribe to the "Mound-builders." 
As to their age, there is a wide difference of opinion among scientific 
observers. As to who the " Mound-builders " were, there is abundant room 
for individual speculation. It is, however, the opinion of the most careful 
experts, and the theory accepted by the United States Ethnological Bureau, 
that the mounds are not the product of a race of people now extinct, as has 
been so long believed, but that they were built by the ancestors of existing 
tribes of Indians — in Wisconsin, the Dakotas, of whom the present 
Winnebagoes are the lineal descendants; and that while many of the 
mounds, particularly those in the form of animals, are doubtless of great 
antiquity, possibly several thousands of years of age, others are of compara- 
tively recent construction — probably a generation or two earlier than the 
arrival of the first French explorers. 

Nearly two thousand implements and ornaments of hardened copper — 
chiefly knives, axes, spear and arrow-heads, drills, awls, beads and amulets 
— have been picked up in Wisconsin, chiefly in the lake-shore counties and 
on the banks of inland lakes in the southern section of the State, and some- 
times in mounds that are apparently ancient. Here again, arch£eologists 
are not at all in unison. Some maintain that these articles were fashioned 
ages ago, and that the art of hardening copper has been lost to the world; 
while others there are who believe them but little older than the French 
occupation — and some have been so bold as to claim that the first French- 
men who visited Lake Superior taught to the Indians the art of working the 
metal, just as other Frenchmen are known to have initiated the natives in 
the art of lead-working. There is no sure foundation in the study of Wis- 
consin archeology, when the doctors thus disagree. We only know that 

3^9 



370 ERA Oh DISCOIKRY. 



nowhere else in the United States have so many prehistoric copper imple- 
ments been found — many of them identical in shape with those found in 
Ireland and Switzerland; and in no other Slate are there so many interest- 
ing forms of prehistoric mounds. 



THE KRA OK DISCOVERY. 

Wisconsin being at the head of the Great Lakes and embracing several 
of the most important portages connecting the water system of the Great 
Lakes with that of the Mississippi River, her geographical character was 
made known to the French authorities at Quebec quite early in the seven- 
teenth century. But it was not until the year 1634 that an agent of New 
France was sent thither, in the person of Jean Nicolet; he being, so far as 
historical records show, the first white man to set foot upon the territory out 
of which Wisconsin was formed. 

1634. The country was e.xplored by Jean Nicolet, from Lake Michigan, 
for a considerable distance up the Fox River. 

1658. Sieur Radisson and Sieur des Groseilliers, two French fur-traders, 
visited the Green IJay region and wintered among the Pottawatomies. 

1659. Radisson and Groseilliers went up P'ox River, in the spring, and 
spent four months in explorations along Wisconsin streams. It is thought 
that they descended the Wisconsin River and saw the Mississippi. 

1661. Radisson and Groseilliers arrived at Chequamegon Bay in the 
early winter and built a stockade near where Ashland now is. They spent 
the winter in wandering through northwest Wisconsin and northeastern 
Minnesota. 

1662. Radisson and Groseilliers built, in the spring, a new fort at Oak 
Point, on Chequamegon Bay. In June, a Jesuit missionary, Rene Menard, 
accompanied by his servant, Jean Guerin, proceeded from Keweenaw Point 
to the source of Black River, probably via Green Bay and the Fox, 
Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers. Menard lost his life on the Black 
River. 

1665. Father Claude Allouez established the mission of La Pointe, on 
Chequamegon Bay. 

1669. Allouez established a mission on the shores of Green Bay, finally 
locating at De Pere in 1671. 

1670. Allouez made a voyage up Fox River to the present limits of 
Green Lake county. 

1671. The French took formal possession of the whole Xortlnvcst, which 
act was confirmed in 16S9. 

1673. Louis Joliet, accompanied by Father James Marquette, discovered 
the Upper Mississippi, at Prairie du Cliien. Sieur Raudin, representing La 
Salle, visited the western extremity of Lake Superior, to open the fur trade. 

1674. Marquette coasted Lake Michigan, from Green Bay, r/,; Milwaukee 
Bay to the site of the present city of Chicago. 



ERA OF DISCOVERY. 37 ^ 



1679. The Griffin, a schooner built by La Salle, and the first to make 
a voyage of the lakes above Niagara, arrived at the mouth of Green Bay. 
La Salle made a canoe voyage along the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan, 
from Green Bay to Chicago. Daniel Grayson du Lhut (Duluth) ascended 
St. Louis River, held a council, and concluded a peace with the natives 
west of Lake Superior. 

1680. Du Lhut voyaged from Lake Superior to the Mississippi River, 
by ascending the Bois Brule and descending the St. ('roi.x. Father Louis 
Hennepin ascended the Mississippi to the Falls of St. Anthony, returning, 
in company with Du X,hut, over the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, to Green 
Bay. 

1681. Marquette's journal and map of his travels and e.xplorations in the 
Northwest were published in France. 

1683. Le Sueur made a voyage of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers to the 
Mississippi. 

1685. Nicholas Perrot, who had been at Green Bay as early as 1669, 
was appointed "commandant of the West." He proceeded over the Fox- 
Wisconsin river route to the Upper Mississippi, spending the winter at a 
point near the present village of Trempealeau. In 1686 and in later years 
he established posts on Lake Pepin and near the mouth of the Wisconsin. 

1689. Baron la Hontan claimed to have penetrated the Wisconsin wilds, 
this year, by the Fox- Wisconsin route, and to have made extensive dis- 
coveries on the Upper Mississippi. 

1693-95. Military posts established by Le Sueur, on Chequamegon Bay 
and on an island in the Mississippi, guarding the mouth of the St. Croix. 

1699. Father St. Cosme voyaged along the Wisconsin shore of Lake 
Michigan. He visited the site of Milwaukee, October 7. 

1700. Le Sueur discovers lead mines in southwestern Wisconsin. 
1706-07. Marin attacked the Fox Indians at Winnebago Rapids (Neenah). 
1712. The Wisconsin Foxes, instigated by the Iroquois, besieged Detroit. 
1716. De Louvigny's battle with the Fox Indians at Butte des Morts. 

1718. We find mention of French being at Green Bay. Saint Pierre is 
sent to La Pointe to induce the Chippewas not to make war on the Foxes, 
and to make peace between the Chippewas and the Sioux, with whom the 
Foxes were allied. 

1719. Francis Renalt explored the Upper Mississippi with two hundred 
miners. 

1718-21. Fort St. Francis established at Green Bay on the present site 
of Fort Howard. Father Charlevoix visits Green Bay. 

1725. Father Chardon, missionary at Green Bay, reports that the Foxes 
refuse to let the French traders pass over the Fox-Wisconsin river to go to 
the Sioux country. 

1726. The Cardinells settle temporarily at Prairie du Chien. De Lignery 
makes a treaty with the Sacs, Foxes and Winnebagoes, permitting the 
French to pass through Wisconsin to trade with the Sioux at the west side 
of Lake Pepin. 



372 AA'./ 0/- C0I.0A'/ZA7/0iV. 



1727. The French establish Fort Beauharnois on Lake Pepin, with Sieur 
de la Ferriere as commandant. 

1728. A great flood in the Mississippi, and Fort lieauharnois submerged. 
A French expedition under De Lignery, fron Michillimackinac, punishes the 
Sacs and Foxes. Fort St. Francis destroyed, to prevent its falling into the 
hands of the Indians. 

1730. Marin, commanding among the Menomonecs. repels the Foxes and 
later in the year De Villiers vanquishes the tribe. 

1734. A battle between the French and the Sacs and Foxes. 

1735. Legardeur Saint Pierre commands at Lake Pepin. 

1737. Saint Pierre evacuates his post, having heard from La Pointe of 
the massacre of the Verendrye party at the Lake of the Woods. 

1742. The French distribute presents to the Sacs and Foxes. 

1749. The younger Marin stationed at La Pointe. 

1752. lie commands at Lake Pepin. 

1754. Marin, now in command at Green Bay, made a peace with the 
Indians. De Villiers, of Fo.\-war fame, defeats Washington at Fort 
Necessity. 

1756. Marin, commandant at Green Bay, and jiroljably Hertel de Beau- 
bassin, commandant at La Pointe, took part with De Villiers in operations 
against the English in New Vork. 

1758. Menomonees killed eleven Frenchmen at Green Bay and pillaged 
a storehouse. 

1760. The fall of New France, leaving Wisconsin in possession of 
England. 

1761. Captain liclfour and Lieutenant Gorrell, with English troops, 
took possession of Green l>ay. 

1763. The English, under Lieutenant Gorrell, abandoned Green Bay in 
consequence of the Indian war under Pontiac. Treaty of Paris, by which 
New France, including Wisconsin, was formally surrendered to the English. 

1765. Henry, an English trader, reopened the Indian trade on Chequa- 
megon Bay. 

thp: era ok colonization. 

1766. By this year, the Langlades and other white traders had permanently 
.settled at Green Bay —the first white people to call Wisconsin their home. 
Jonathan Carver, a famous traveler, visited Wisconsin. 

1774. Civil government was established over Canada and the Northwest 
by the " Quebec Act." 

1777-78. Indians from Wisconsin, under Langlade and Gautier, join the 
British against the Americans. 

1779. Gautier leads a band of Wisconsin Indians against Peoria. Captain 
Robertson, of the British sloop " Felicity," made a voyage of reconnois- 
sance around l,akc Michigan, inducing traders and Indians to support the 
English. 



ERA OF COLONJZATION. 373 



1780. Wisconsin Indians attack St. Louis and Cahokia. Jolin Long, 
an English trader, visits Green Bay and Prairie du Chien. 

1781. Lieutenant-Governor Patrick Sinclair, of Mackinaw, purchased 
Green Bay, Prairie du Chien and the intervening territory from the Indians, 
which purchase was not confirmed by the American government. The 
settlement of Prairie du Chien was commenced by Bazil Giard, Augustin 
Ange and Pierre Antaya. 

1786. Julian Dubuque explored the lead region of the Upper Mississippi. 

1788. At an Indian council at Green Bay, permission to work the lead 
mines was given to Dubuque. 

1789. Jean Baptiste Mirandeau is alleged to have settled at Milwaukee. 
1793. Lawrence Barth built a cabin at the portage of the Fo.x and 

Wisconsin rivers, and engaged in the carrying trade. 

1795. Jacques Vieau established trading posts at Kewaunee, Sheboygan, 
Manitowoc and Milwaukee. 

1796. The western posts surrendered by the English to the United States, 
and the ordinance of 1787 extended over the whole Northwest. 

1800. Indiana territory organized, including Wisconsin. 

1803. Charles Reaume appointed magistrate at Green Bay, by Governor 
William Henry Harrison, of Indiana. 

1804. Indian treaty at St. Louis; a portion of southern Wisconsin, 
including the lead region, purchased. 

1805. Michigan territory organized. 

1809. Thomas Nuttall, the botanist, and John Bradbury, the naturalist, 
explored Wisconsin. Wilson P. Hunt and Ramsay Crooks passed through 
Wisconsin with the land expedition destined to found Astoria, Oregon. 
Illinois territory was organized, including nearly all of Wisconsin. 

1812. Indians assembled at Green Bay to join the English. 

1813. Governor Clarke took possession of Prairie du Chien, and built 
Fort Shelby. 

1814. Fort Shelby surrendered to the r>ritish, under Colonel McKay. 

1815. United States trading post established at Green Bay. 

1816. Indian treaty confirming that of 1804. John Jacob Astor reestab- 
lishes the American Fur Company at Mackinaw, with branches in Wisconsin. 
United States troops took possession of Prairie du Chien, and commenced 
the erection of Fort Crawford. Colonel Miller commenced the erection of 
Fort Howard, at Green Bay. 

1818. Illinois was admitted into the Union. Wisconsin was attached to 
Michigan territory. Brown, Crawford and Michillimackinac counties were 
organized in the territory of Michigan, which embraced in their boundaries 
besides other territory, the whole of the present State of Wisconsin. Solo- 
mon Juneau arrived at Milwaukee. 

1820. United States comm.issioners adjusted land claims at Green Bay. 

1822. The New York Indians purchased lands east of Lake Winnebago. 
James Johnson obtained from the Indians the right to dig for lead with 
negro slaves from Kentucky. 



)7 \ ERA OF FORMA F/OM. 



1823. Counties of Brown, Crawford and Michillimackinac made a sep- 
arate judicial district by Congress. First steamljoat on tlie upper Missis- 
sippi, with Major Taliafero and Count Beltrami. Lieutenant Bayfield, of 
the British navy, made a survey of Lake Superior. An Episcopal mission 
established near Green Bay. 



THE ERA OF FOR.MATION. 

1824. First term of United States circuit court held at Green Bay; 
James I). Doty, judge — October 4. Judge Doty commenced agitation in 
behalf of territorial formation. 

1826. First steamboat on Lake Michigan. 

1827. A rush of speculators to the lead mines, and leases by govern- 
ment to miners. Red Bird uprising. Treaty with the Menomonee Indians 
at Butte des Morts — August 11. 

1828. Fort Winnebago built at " the portage." Indian treaty at Green 
Bay; the lead regions purchased. Lead ore discovered at Mineral Point 
and Dodgeville. 

1829. A Methodist mission established at Green Bay. 

1830. The Siou.x killed seventeen Sacs and Fo.ves near Prairie du Chien 
— May. 

1832. Black Hawk War. The Sac leader invades Illinois at Yellow 
p,jinks — April 6. Defeat of whites at Stillman's creek — May 14. Battle 
of Wisconsin Heights — July 21. Battle of Bad A.xe and defeat of Black 
Hawk — August 2. Public lands in the lead region surveyed. 

1833. Indian treaty at Chicago ; lands south and west of Milwaukee 
ceded to the Government — September 26. American settlement began at 
Milwaukee in the fall of this year. First newspaper, " Green Bay Intelli- 
gencer," published — December 11. 

1834. Land offices established at Mineral Point and Green Bay. Census 
taken, population 4,795. 

1835. First steamboat landed at Milwaukee — June 17. Public lands at 
Milwaukee surveyed. 

1836. Meeting in Milwaukee to ask legislature to grant a charter for a 
railway from Lake Michigan to Mississippi River. The legislative council 
of so much of Michigan Territory as was not to be included in the new 
State of Michigan, met at Green Bay — January 9. Henry Dodge ap- 
pointed Governor by President Andrew Jackson — April 30. Territory of 
Wisconsin organized — July 4. "Milwaukee Advertiser" published at 
No. 371 Third Street — July 14. First school opened in Milwaukee, at 
No. 371 Third Street. United States land ottice opened at Milwaukee. 
Gold discovered at Kewaunee. 

1837. Siou.x treaty; lands east of the .Missi.ssippi ceded — September 29. 

1838. Congress appropriated $2,000 for surveying a railroad route from 
Milwaukee to the Mississippi River. 



ERA OF DEVELOPMENT. 375 



1839. Indian (Sioux and Chippewa) battle ; 200 killed. The capital 
located at Madison. Mitchell's bank opened in Milwaukee. 

1840. First brew of beer at Milwaukee — July. 

1842. Charles C. P. Arndt shot in council chamber by James R. Vine- 
yard — February 1 1 . 

1844. Originators of the Wisconsin Phalanx settle at Ceresco, now 
Ripon — May. 

1845. James Je.sse Strang establishes a Mormon colony at Voree. 

1846. A vote of the people in favor of a state government — April. .Act 
of Congress authorizing a state government — August. 

1847. First railroad charter in Wisconsin granted to the Milwaukee & 
Waukesha Company. 

1848. Wisconsin admitted as a State — May 29. First State legislature 
convenes — June 5. First State officers sworn in —^ June 7. First United 
States Senators, Henry Dodge and Isaac P. Walker, elected. Andrew J. 
Miller, first judge United States District Cpurt, appointed — June 12. 

THE ERA OF DEVELOPMENT. 

1849. First earth moved for a railroad in Wisconsin, at Milwaukee. 
Legislature, by joint resolution, instructed United States Senator, Isaac P. 
Walker, to resign — March 31. First telegram received at Milwaukee — 
"Chicago and Milwaukee united" — January 17. Cholera epidemic. 
" Gold fever " took many settlers to California. 

1850. Liquor riot at Milwaukee. Mob attacked and partly wrecked res- 
idence of John B. Smith, for introducing, while in the legislature, a bill 
called the "blue liquor law." Smith being absent, escaped injury — 
March 4. 

1851. First railroad train run between Milwaukee and Waukesha — 
February. Catholics of Milwaukee mobbbed Mr. Leahy, a former Catho- 
lic, for delivering anti-Catholic lectures — .April. 

1853. Charges lodged against Levi Hubbell, alleging malfeasance in 
office as judge of second judicial district. He was acquitted — January. 

1854. Meeting held at Ripon, called by A. E. Bovay, Jediah Bowen and 
others to organize the Republican party. Name " Republican " then sug- 
gested by Mr. Bovay — February 28. Beginning of contest between federal 
and State authorities over fugitive slave law, by arrest of Joshua Glover, a 
negro, at Racine, and his forcible liberation at Milwaukee. First Republi- 
can mass convention, held in Capitol Park, at Madison ; three thousand 
persons participated ; name " Republican " formally i.dopted — July 13. 

1856. Coles Bashford took oath of office as governor, and began pro- 
ceedings to oust William A. Barstow, on the ground that Barstovv was 
wrongfully "counted in" by means of fictitious and fraudulent "supple- 
mental " returns from unpeopled districts in the north part of the State — 
January 7. Barstow's counsel withdrew from the case — March S. The 
supreme court found Barstow to be a usurper, counted in upon fraudulent 



37^ AAV/ 01' DKVEI.OrMEXr. 



returns from Spring Creek, Gilbert's Mills and other places. Barstow 
abandoned the office, and Lieutenant-Governor McArthnr assumed the 
executive chair for four days. Was succeeded by Hashford. Steamer 
Niagara burned off Fort Washington ; John B. Macy, pioneer member of 
Congress, one of the lost — September 24. 

1857. First railway reached Mississippi River, at Prairie du Chien — 
April 15. 

1859. Excursion train celebrating opening of what is now Chicago & 
Northwestern railway, between Fond du Lac and Chicago, wrecked at John- 
son's Creek, Jefferson County. Fourteen killed, seven wounded — Novem- 
ber I. 

i860. Steamer Lady Elgin, with si.\ hundred e.xcursionists, sunk in colli- 
sion off Racine ; two hundred and twenty-five, mostly from Third ward of 
Milwaukee, drowned — September 8. 

1861. Report received of bombardment of Fort Sumter — April 10. 
Lincoln's call for 75,000 three months' volunteers — April 15. Governor 
Randall calls for one regiment from Wisconsin — April 16. The Madison 
Guard had tendered its services January 9, and was the first company 
accepted, April 16. By the twenty-second, the First regiment was organized 
and ready for orders ; it was mustered into United States service ^Lay 17, 
receiving marching orders June 7. Bank riot at Milwaukee. Mitchell's 
bank attacked ; inmates, including Mr. Mitchell, escaped, but building 
damaged. Militia called out — June 24. George C. Drake, Company A, 
First Infantry, first Wisconsin soldier killed in the Rebellion at skirmish of 
Falling Waters, Va. — July 2. The Second Wisconsin the last regiment to 
leave the field of Bull Run. The Third arrest the Maryland legislature at 
Frederick. 

1862. Governor L. P. Harvey started South to note the wants of Wiscon- 
sin soldiers — April 10. Governor Harvey accidentally drowned in the 
Tennessee River — April 19. About 700 Confederate prisoners received at 
Camp Randall, Madison — April. The Fourteenth regiment captures a 
battery at Shiloh. The Iron Brigade wins renown at Gainesville. In the 
battles of the Second Bull Run, Cedar Mountain, Antietam, Corinth, Chap- 
lin Hills, Prairie Grove, Frederickslnirg and Stone's River, Wisconsin 
troops won especial honors. Draft riots in Port Washington, West Bend 
and Milwaukee quelled by troops. 

1863. Democratic State convention at Madison adopts the " Ryan Ad- 
dress," denouncing the war and attacking the Federal government — 
August 5. " War Democrats " held mass convention at Janesville, to pro- 
test against the "Ryan Address," and pledge the support of Wisconsin to 
the government in its struggle with treason — September 17. Wisconsin 
soldiers particularly distinguished themselves in the battles of Fit/ Hugh's 
Crossing, Chancellorsville, Arkansas Post, Port Gibson, Champion Hills, 
Big Black, Helena. Gettysburg, Port Hudson, Chickamauga, Mission Ridge, 
the Rappahannock Redouljts and Carrion Crow, in the assault on Mary's 
Hill, and in the siege of Vicksburg. 



ERA OF PROGRESS. 377 

1864. Colonel Hobart, of Wisconsin, assists in the escape by tht Libby 
Prison tunnel — February 9. Wisconsin regiments were prominent in the 
Red River expedition, in the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, the 
crossing of the North Anna, Petersburg and Hatcher's Run, in the move- 
ment against Atlanta, in Sherman's march to the sea, and in the operations 
in and around Nashville. 

1865. Wisconsin troops were with Sherman when Johnston's army sur- 
rendered, also in the final operations against Mobile and in many other of 
the closing engagements of the war. Wisconsin cavalry assisted in captur- 
ing Jefferson Davis. The State furnished 91,327 men to the war. Cyclone 
at Viroqua, Vernon County, seventeen persons killed, one hundred and 
fifty wounded and many buildings demolished — June 28. 

THE ERA OF PROGRESS. 

1866. Fourth Regiment Cavalry mustered out after service of five years 
and one day, longest term on record of a volunteer organization — May 28. 
James R. Doolittle requested by the Wisconsin Legislature to resign from 
the United States Senate for siding with the South. 

1868. The Sea Bird burned on Lake Michigan; all lost but two — 
April. 

1871. Great fires in Door, Oconto, Shawano, Outagamie, Brown and 
Manitowoc counties. One thousand persons perished and three thousand 
were beggared — October 8. 

1873. Steamer Ironsides wrecked between Milwaukee and Grand Haven ; 
twenty-eight people lost — September 14. Hurricane on Green Lake, Green 
Lake County. Eleven persons drowned — July 4. 

1874. Potter railroad law enacted. Ale.xander Mitchell and Albert Keep, 
presidents respectively of the St. Paul and the Northwestern roads, issued 
proclamations directed to the governor defying the Potter law and announc- 
ing that they should operate their railroads without regard for its provisions 
— April 29. Governor Taylor issued a proclamation demanding obedience 
to the Potter law — May. State supreme court sustains the law — Septem- 
ber. 

1875. A large portion of Oshkosh burned — April 28. First cotton cloth 
made in Wisconsin, at Janesville. 

1876. Supreme Court rejected the application of Miss Lavinia Goodell, 
for admission to the bar of Wisconsin — January. 

1877. Legislature .enacted a law giving women the right to practice law. 
Destructive cyclone at Pensaukee, Oconto County. 

1878. Tramp War. Mineral Point cyclone; from eleven to sixteen per- 
sons killed — June. 

1880. Death of Chief Justice E. G. Ryan — October 19. 

i88r. Death of Matthew H. Carpenter, ex-U. S. senator — February 24. 
Strike of all the cigar-makers of Milwaukee. " Saw-dust war " at Eau Claire. 
Striking men threatened to destroy mills. Militia called out — July. 



378 ERA OF rROCNESS. 



1883. Newhall House, Milwaukee, burned ; between seventy and eighty 
persons perished — January 10. Death of Timothy O. Howe, ex-U. S. 
senator — March 25. South wing of the capitol extension, during process 
of erection, fell, killing seven workmen — November S. Cyclone at Racine ; 
thirteen persons killed. 

1884. Science Hall of the State University burned — December i. 

1886. Workmen in Milwaukee struck to enforce the adoption of the 
eight-hour day — May i. Strikers became riotous at Hay View ar^d Milwau- 
kee, and, refusing to obey the proclamation of Governor Rusk, were fired 
upon bv the militia. Seven killed and several wounded — May 3-5. " Lim- 
ited Express " on C, M. & St. P. R. R. wrecked and burned at East Rio ; 
fifteen persons burned or killed — October. 

1887. Culmination of the Gogebic iron stocks craze. 
i888. Collapse of the Gogebic iron stocks. 

1889. Strike of laborers at West Superior. Quiet restored by State 
militia. 

Wisconsin has contributed to the direction and development of the 
United States of America, four cabinet members, namely : Alexander W. 
Randall, postmaster-general under President Johnson ; Timothy O. Howe, 
postmaster-general under President Hayes ; William F. Vilas, at first 
postmaster-general and later secretary of the interior, under President 
Cleveland, and Jeremiah M. Rusk, secretary of agriculture under President 
Harrison. She has furnished numerous ministers to foreign courts, and 
many of her sons have won high ofilicial station in other States. 



THE PEOPLE'S COVENANT 



AS EMBODIED IN THE CONSTITUTION OE THE STATE 
OE WISCONSIN. 

In April, 1S46, the people voted in favor of a State Government. On the 
sixteenth of December, a constitution was adopted in convention, which was 
rejected by a vote of the people. Eebruary 4, 1848, a second constitution 
was adopted in convention, which was ratified by the people on the thirteenth 
of March, in that year, and on the twenty-ninth day of May Wisconsin became 
a State in the Union, being the seventeenth admitted, and the thirtieth in the 
list of States. The preamble of the Constitution is as follows : 

" We, the people of Wisconsin, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, 
in order to secure its blessings, form a more perfect government, insure 
domestic tranquillity, and promote the general welfare, do establish this 
Constitution." 

The document itself is divided into fourteen articles, which are here con- 
densed to the briefest possible limits. 

Article I. constitutes the Declaration of Rights, and is divided into twenty- 
two sections. After laying down the general principle that government is 
established to secure personal freedom, it makes special applications as fol- 
lows : Slavery is prohibited, and freedom of speech, assembly and petition, 
as well as legal justice, guaranteed. Treason is defined ; rights of search 
limited ; bills of attainder and corruption of blood, and ex post facto laws are 
forbidden; contracts shall not be impaired; private property must be re- 
spected by the State ; there shall be no distinction against resident aliens, 
and feudal tenures are forbidden. There shall be no imprisonment for debt, 
and "a reasonable amount of property" is to be exempt from seizure or 
sale. Religious freedom is guaranteed. The military shall be subordinate 
to the civil power and writs of error shall never be prohibited by law. 

Article II. divided into two sections, defines the boundaries of the State. 

Article III. consisting of six sections, relates to suffrage. Only males, 
twenty-one years of age, are qualified to vote. If a foreigner, the voter 
must have resided one year within the State and declared his intention to 
become a citizen. Civilized Indians or those made citizens by Congress, 
may vote. The classes disqualified are : (i) Idiots and insane persons; (2) 
convicts, unless restored to civil rights ; (3) United States soldiers or 
marines stationed within the State ; (4) those who have a wager pending on 
an election ; (5) duelists. The manner of voting is prescribed. Judges 
may be voters, citizens of the United States and twenty-five \ ears of age. 
Both the governor and lieutenant-governor must be voters and citizens of 

379 



380 THE constuvtioa: 



the United States. Members of the legislature must be voters and residents 
of their districts. All State, county, town and district otificers (except school 
otificers) must be voters. Members of Congress, United States officers, 
officers of foreign powers, criminals or defaulters cannot be elected to any 
post of trust, profit or honor within the State. Sheriffs are not eligible for 
re-election. The general State elections are to be held in November; while 
elections for judges and town, village or city officers are to be in Ai)ril. 

Article IV. divided into thirty sections, treats of the Legislative depart- 
ment. The Legislature is divided into two houses, the Senate and the 
Assembly, the lower house to consist of from fifty-four to one hundred mem- 
bers, and the upper from one fourth to one third as many. The manner of 
apportionment, after each State and national census, is specified. The 
term of the Senators is to be two years and that of Assemblymen one year 
(afterwards doubled, by amendment). Elections are to be held each 
November for all of the Assemblymen and one half of the -Senators (after- 
wards changed by amendment), and sessions are to be held each year, com- 
mencing in January (afterwards made biennial). Each House is made the 
judge of the election of its own members. A majority in each House, is a 
quorum. Each House must sit with open doors and keep a public journal, 
and may punish disorder, e.\pel by a two thirds vote, choose its officers, and 
adjourn for three days or less. A member is prohibited from accepting any 
civil position in the State, created during his term of office ; he must resign 
on accepting any jjosition under the United States; he shall not be inter- 
ested in any State printing contract and must take the oath of office. He 
is privileged from arrests and civil suits, during the sessions of the Legis- 
lature or fifteen days before or after the session ; he is not to be held liable 
for words spoken in debate, and is to receive a per diem and mileage. The 
governor is to issue writs of election, to fill vacancies. Any bill may 
originate in either House. There shall be but one system of town and 
county government and that as nearly uniform as possible. The Legis- 
lature cannot authorize a lottery or declare a divorce. No extra compen- 
sation shall be allowed any State officer during his term of office. 

Article V. has ten sections. It treats of the executive department. The 
governor is made commander-in-chief of the military and naval forces of the 
State. His salary is fixed at one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars 
(afterwards changed to five thousand dollars). He can convene the Legis- 
lature in special session, address messages to it on matters of State impor. 
tance, and veto bills ; which, however, can be passed over his veto by a 
two thirds vote in each house. He has charge of the administration of the 
laws; can remove certain county officers , for cause; call elections to fill 
vacancies and issue pardons and reprieves. He can be removed by impeach- 
ment. The lieutenant-governor is to serve in the absence, disability, death 
or removal of the governor ; and if both governor and lieutenant-governor 
be thus incai)acitated, the secretary of state shall act until the disability shall 
cease. The lieutenant is also president of the .Senate. 

Article I'!. Ircatiiig of (he administrati\ c ilcp.irtnicnt, is di\ idcd into four 



7 HE COA'STITl/T/OiV. -sSi 



sections, and defines the nnniber and rank of the other elective State officers 
and names the several boards in charge of various liranches of the State 
business. 

Article VII. in twenty-three sections, treats of the judiciary. There are 
established, the State supreme court, with a chief-justice and four associ- 
ates, having both original and appellate jurisdiction ; and fifteen circuit 
judges, also having original and appellate jurisdiction, and holding regular 
terms in the several counties in their respective circuits. These judges 
may be removed either by impeachment or by address. Below these are the 
probate, municipal and county courts, court commissioners, justices of the 
peace, and certain tribunals of conciliation which may be established by 
the Legislature. The article specifies modes of procedure. 

Article I'lII. having ten sections, treats of finance. Taxation shall be 
uniform and annual. No money is to be paid from the treasury except by 
Legislative appropriation. The peace debt, for extraordinary purposes, 
shall never exceed one hundred thousand dollars, and must be paid in five 
years. But especial exception is made, in times of war, invasion or insurrec- 
tion. The credit of the Slate is never to be loaned, no debt shall be con- 
tracted for internal improvements and no scrip is to be issued except f(jr 
constitutional debts. 

Article IX. in three sections, treats of eminent domain and property. 

Article X. consisting of eight sections, treats of education. The edu- 
cational affairs are placed in the hands of the state superintendent and such 
other officers as the Legislature may direct. The sources of the school 
fund are declared to be : (i) The lands granted to the State by the United 
States, for this purpose ; (2) property forfeited or escheated; (3) military 
exemptions ; (4) net proceeds of penal fines ; (5) all unspecified grants to 
the State ; (6) five hundred thousand acres of land obtained from the 
United States; (7) five per cent, of the net proceeds of United States land 
sales. Under certain conditions, the school fund is appropriated in pro- 
portion to the school population, among the towns and cities of the State. 
District schools are to be uniform in character, free to persons of school 
age and unsectarian. Certain academies and normal schools are provided 
for. The State university is to be at or near the capital, unsectarian and 
supported in part by special grants from the United States. The school 
land commissioners consist of the secretary of state, treasurer and attorney- 
general, and their powers and duties are specified in the article. 

Article XI. treats of corporations and is divided into five sections. The 
article has been amended to such a degree that but little of the original 
remains. It is now provided that there shall be two classes of corporations, 
municipal and private. The former are cities organized by special charters, 
which may be revised by the Legislature ; and towns and villages organized 
under general law. In regard to banks, the Legislature has no power to 
charter them ; all banking laws must be general, but can onlv be passed by 
special consent of the people. General laws may be passed for the rcrti- 
l"ticn of other corporations. 



38= 



THE coNsjrjvriox. 



Artiilc .\'ll- ill lw'i sections, tells how the constitution may be amended : 
(i) Hy the vole of two successive Legislatures and then the vote of the peo- 
ple; (:;) by a convention, to be proposed by the Legislature, called by the 
people, and arranged for by the Legislature, and then the members of the 
convention to be elected by the pcojilc. 

Article XIII. in ten sections, contains miscellaneous provisions, chiefly in 
matters of detail. 

Article Xir. the schedule, in fifteen sections, provides for the details of 
the transition from Territory to State and winding up the affairs of the 

Territory. 

There have been ten amendments to the constitution, since its adoption, 
the most important of which have been covered in the foregoing abstract. 



A SELECTION OF BOOKS 

TOUCHING UPON THE STORY OF WISCONSIN. 

There have been previously published but few general histories of Wis- 
consin, and none of them written in a popular vein. Lapham's (1844 and 
1846) and McLeod's (1846) were issued while Wisconsin was still a terri- 
tory, at a time when but little research had been made in the history of the 
Northwest. Smith's (1854) is a fragment. Tuttle's (1875) is an undigested 
mass of annals, filled with glaring inaccuracies. Strong's (1885) is simply 
a compilation of the Territorial annals. Aside from these, the Story of 
Wisconsin has never yet appeared, except in floating sketches introductory 
to certain county histories, reference to which will be made. 

The prime source of materials for the study of early Wisconsin history is 
the " Wisconsin Historical Collections," of which eleven octavo volumes 
have thus far been published by the State Historical Society. Consul W^. 
Butterfield has written several excellent condensed historical sketches of the 
State. One of these will be found in the opening pages of each of the series 
of county histories published from 1879 '"^ 1882, inclusive, by the Western 
Historical Company of Chicago. The sketch in the histories of Vernon, 
Crawford and Green counties will be found superior to the others. Similar 
historical sketches by Butterfield may be found in Snyder & Van Vechten's 
" Historical Atlas of Wisconsin " (Milwaukee, 1878) ; in the Wisconsin num- 
ber of " Descriptive America " (New York, October, 1884) ; and he has 
contributed miscellaneous sketches of details in Wisconsin history, to the 
" Magazine of Western History," 1886-89. 

The following, more or less accessible, may be consulted : " History of 
Wisconsin," by Donald McLeod (1846); " Wisconsin," by I. A. Lapham 
{1844, enlarged in 1846); "History of Wisconsin," by William R. Smith 
(published by the State, 1854, Vols. I. and HI., all that were issued) ; 
"Illustrated History of the State of Wisconsin," by C. R. Tuttle (1875) > 
" History of the Territory of Wisconsin, from 1836 to 1848," by Moses M. 
Strong (published by the State, 1885). 

Special works of interest are: "Fathers of Wisconsin," by Horace A. 
Tenney and David Atwood (published by the State, 1880), being an account 
of the two constitutional conventions, supplemented by biographies of their 
members ; " History of Education in Wisconsin " (published by the State, 
1876) ; " Higher Education in Wisconsin," by William F. Allen and David E. 
Spencer (published by the Bureau of Education, Washington, 1889). " Wau 
Bun, the Early Dav in the Northwest," by Mrs. John TT. Kiiizie. was originallv 
published with illustrations, by Derby & Jackson, New York, in 1S56; it was 

3^3 . 



3^4 BOO AS RELATING TO WlSCOXSJN. 



rci>n'ntecl in smaller and cheaper form and witliout plates, by J. 1?. Lijjpin- 
cott & Co., Philadelphia, in 1873. It gives graphic pictures of life and man- 
ners at the Wisconsin frontier posts, before and during the Ulack Hawk 
War. " Historic Waterways," by Reuben G. Thwaites (Chicago, iSSS), 
describes the historic rivers of Wisconsin as they appear to-day, with refer- 
ence to the story of their past. George Gale's " Upper Mississippi ; or. His- 
torical Sketches of the Mound-Builders, the Indian Tribes and the Progress 
of Civilization in the West " (Chicago, 1S67) is now rare and excellent. Hut 
the latest conclusions regarding the mound-builders should be sought in 
Cyrus Thomas's " Work on Mound Explorations " (Uureau of Ethnology Re- 
]iort, 1887) ; in articles by Thomas in " Magazine of American History " for 
May, 18S7, and September, 18S8 ; in Lucien Carr's "Mounds of the Missis- 
sippi Valley " (Memoirs of Kentucky Geological Survey, Vol. II.) ; and in P. 
R. Hoy's " Who Built the Mounds.-"' (Transactions of Wisconsin .Academy 
of Sciences, Arts and Letters, Vol. VI.) I. A. Lapham's" Antiquities of Wis- 
consin" (Smithsonian Contributions, 1855) is rare, but well worth hunting up, 
being written in quite the modern spirit. Most of the great mass of litera- 
ture about the mound-builders is unscientific and romantic, and not worthy 
of serious attention. The vexed question of who made the "prehistoric" 
copper tools is well treated by P. R. Hoy in the Wisconsin Academy vol- 
ume above cited. A pamphlet on " Prehistoric Wisconsin," by James D. 
Butler, contains lithographs of some famous copper implements in the 
museum of the State Historical Society. Frederick J. Turner's " The 
Character and Influence of the Fur Trade in Wisconsin " (pul)lished by the 
Wisconsin .State Historical Society, 18S9) cannot be too highly commended 
for breadth of viesv and accuracy of detail. Albert O. Wright's "Expo- 
sition of the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin" (Madison, 18SS) is 
an admirable treatise, used as a text-book in the public schools. The story 
of the Black Hawk War is told by Reuben G. Thwaites in the " Magazine 
of Western History" (Cleveland, O.) for November and December, 1886. 
Charles Dudley Warner's article on W^isconsin, in "Harper's Magazine" 
for April, 1888, is worthy of perusal. See, also, the excellent article on 
Wisconsin, in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, by Thomas 
C. Chamberlin and Frederick J. Turner, liutterfield'.* " Discovery of the 
Northwest" (Cincinnati, iSSi) is an exceedingly valuable monograph on 
Jean Nicolet's notable expedition. 

Wisconsin's part in the War of the Rebellion maybe studied in : " Annual 
Report of the Adjutant-General [Aug. Gaylord] for 1865," now a very rare 
book; "The Military History of Wisconsin," illustrated with steel engrav- 
ings, by Edmund B. Quiner (Clarke and Co., Chicago, 1866, pp. 1022) ; 
" Wisconsin in the War of the Rebellion," with steel engravings, by Wm. 
De Loss Love (Church & Goodman, Chicago, 1866, pp. 1144) ; also in sev- 
eral fugitive essays, pamphlets and booklets, although Wisconsin has not 
yet developed many writers of war reminiscence. Pklwin E. Bryant's 
"Badgers in Battle" (Wisconsin Soldiers and Sailors Reunion Rosier, 
Milwaukee, 1880) is a helpful skdch 



BOOKS RELATING TO WISCONSIN. t;^,^ 



For a general study of llic historic Nortliwest Territory, the most avail- 
able work is that written by 1!. A. Hinsdale, " The Old Northwest, with a 
view of the thirteen cohjnics as constituted by the royal charters" (New 
York, 1888). Theodore Roosevelt's " Winning of the West " (New York, 
18S9), neglects Wisconsin, but maybe cordially recommended for its general 
view of the West in the Revolution. Samuel Adams Drake's "The Mak- 
ing of the Great West," is built on good lines and is useful. Frederick J. 
Turner's " Outline Studies in the History of the Northwest " (Chicago, 1888) 
is a bibliography that will be found of value to special students. Various 
articles in Winsor's '' Narrative and Critical History of America," esjje- 
cially those by William F. Poole and Edward D. Neill, should be examined. 

The notable discovery of the Mississippi by Joliet and Marquette may be 
best studied in detail, in " Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi 
Valley, with the Original Narratives of Marquette, AUouez, Membre, Henne- 
pin, etc.," by John G. Shea (New York, 1852-53). Shea's " History of the 
Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the United States, from 1529 
to 1824 " (New York, 1855) may be profitably studied, in connection with 
Parkman's " Jesuits in North America." A comprehensive account of the 
French occupation will be found in the introductory chapters to Parkman's 
" Conspiracy of Pontiac ; " this rapid review will be useful to those not 
acquainted with the earlier voluines of Parkman. A thorough reading of 
Parkman's nine volumes is, however, to be earnestly urged upon students 
who wish to have a good foundation in Wisconsin history. Neill's " History 
of Minnesota," and his " Minnesota Explorers and Pioneers," are invaluable 
in studying French exploration, particularly along the Upper Mississippi 
and Lake Superior. Neill's many magazine articles on the early Frencli are 
worth hunting for, in " Poole's Index." The " Jesuit Relations " and " Rad- 
isson's Voyages" (Prince Society publications) are original documents of 
prime importance. 



INDEX. 



Agriculture, 338. 

Algonkins driven to Wisconsin, 37. 

Allouez, Claude, missionary to Wisconsin, 
47 ; establishes a mission at Depere, 49. 

American Fur Company organized, 133 ; its 
headquarters at Mackinaw Island, 152 ; 
stronghold in Wisconsin, 155. 

Andre, Louis, Jesuit missionary, 52. 

Antietam, Wisconsin regiments at, 297. 

Appleton, 353. 

Arndt-Vineyard quarrel, the, 213. 

Ashland, early explorers at, 41 ; present con- 
dition of, 354. 

Astor, John Jacob, organizes the American 
Fur Company, 133 ; his expedition to Wis- 
consin, 133 ; establishes headquarters at 
Mackinaw Island, 152 ; his monopoly of 
the fur trade, 157. 

Atkinson, General Henry, in Winnebago 
war, 174; in Black Hawk War, 183. 

Bad Ax, Battle of, 173 ; in Black Hawk War, 
I go. 

Bailey, Lt. Col., Joseph, 317. 

Barstow, William A., Secretary of State, 
236; "Barstow and the Balance," 237; 
elected governor, 239; contest with Bash- 
ford, 241 ; resigns his office, 242. 

Barth, Laurent, trapper and trader, 125. 

Bashford, Coles, claims election as governor, 
240 ; suit against Barstow, 241 ; inaugu- 
rated as governor, 245. 

Belmont, seat of first territorial legislature, 
198. 

Beloit, 353. 

Black Hawk War, 1S0-191 ; results of, 191. 

" Bostonniens," the, name given to Ameri- 
can traders, no. 

Burlington, second legislative session held at, 
202. 

Burns, John, at Gettysburg, 311. 

Cadotte, Michel, at La Pointe, 129. 

Cardinell, Madame, first white woman settler, 
105. 

Carver, Captain Jonathan, in Wisconsin, 
107 ; obtains a valuable grant, 108. 



Champlain in Canada, 20 ; death of, 36. 
Charlevoix, Father, in Wisconsin, 86. 
Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin, 159. 
Coureiirs de bois, early in the Northwest, 

20; in Wisconsin, 54; their guerrilla war- 
fare, 114. 
Creole boatmen of the Northwest, 132. 
Dablon, Father, in Wisconsin, 50. 
Depere, site of early Jesuit mission, 49; so- 

leil found at, 77. 
Dodge, Henry, first Territorial governor, 197; 

removed, 213. 
Doty, James Duane, names territory " Wis- 

konsin," 197 ; selects Madison as capital, 

200; appointed territorial governor, 213. 
Drake, George, first Wisconsin man killed in 

the Civil War, 291. 
Du Lhut in Wisconsin, 64, 69 ; his meeting 

with Hennepin, 70. 
Eau Claire, 351. 
Education in Wisconsin, 358. 
Farmers Institutes, 360. 
Fifth Wisconsin Regiment at Williamsburg, 

294 ; at Fredericksburg, 302. 
First Wisconsin Regiment, recruited, 275; 

mustered into service, 276; engagement at 

Falling Waters, 278 ; reorganized as a 

three-years regiment, 278; at Chaplin 

Hills, 279. 
Fisheries, 338. 

B'oreign born inhabitants, 344-350. 
F'ond du Lac, 351. 
Forest fires, 334. 
Fort Antoine erected, 76. 
F'ort Crawford erected, 153 ; abandoned, 167. 
Fort Edward Augustus, see Green Bay. 
Fort Howard established, 154. 
Fort Mackinaw, massacre at, 96 ; reoccupied, 

98. 
Fort St. Francis, see Green Bay. 
Fort Shelby, capture of, 145. 
Fourteenth Wisconsin Regiment at Shiloh, 

294; at Corinth, 298; at Vicksburg, 305. 
Fox river; discovered, 23 ; Indian tradition 

of, 33- 



387 



388 



IXDFX. 



Fox aiul Wisconsin Uiver Iniprnvcmcnl, the, 

254- 
" French train," The, 204. 
" Fugitive slave " troubles in Wisconsin, 247. 
Fur traders on Lake Huron, 20; on Lake 

Superior, 20. 
Gautier, Charles, partisan captain, 108 ; re- 
cruiting expedition of, iio; his allies, iii. 
Gorrell, Lieutenant James, ni command at 

Green Hay, 91 ; evacuates Green Bay, 97. 
Griffin, The ; vessel of La Salle, at Green 

•Bay, 65. 
Grignon, Augustin, Indian trader, 157. 
Green Bay ; visited by Nicolet, 27; supposed 
by him to be the " China Sea," 29; visited 
by missionaries, 49; made French military 
post of Fort St. Francis, 85 ; taken pos- 
session of by England, 90 ; named Fort 
Edward Augustus, 91 ; trading and agri- 
culture at, 98; Judge Kcaume's court at, 
150; American occupation of, 153. 
Harvey, Governor, 286. 
Hennepin, Louis, in Wisconsin, 68 ; his 

meeting with Du Lhut, 70. 
Historical society. The State, 362. 
Hubbell, Judge Levi, impeachment of, 235. 
Huron, Lake, visited by fur traders, 20. 
Indians; early tribes, 16, iS ; visited by Nic- 
olet, 24 ; early troubles with, 37 ; visited by 
Radissou and Groseilliers, 39 ; visited by 
missionaries, 40, 47 ; missions established 
among, 49, 50; tribal wars, 51; idols of, 
51 ; and the missionaries, 53 ; treaty mak- 
ing with France, 55 ; bad faith toward the 
French, 81 ; troubles with, 83, 85 ; under 
English patronage, 92 ; Pontiac's war, 95 ; 
in 1780, 112; treaty with Sinclair, 117; at 
date of American occupation, 122 ; Ameri- 
can agreement with, 130; character of 
trade with, 155 , aggressions against miners 
and settlers, 163 ; New York Indians re- 
moved to Wisconsin, 177; concessions of, 
179; during the Civil War, 289; present 
number and condition, 354. 
" Iron Brigade," The, 297, 301, 307, 308, 

31S. 
Iron mines, 335. 
Jancsville, 353. 

Joliet, Louis, in Wisconsin, 56; joins Mar- 
quette, 57 ; discovers the Mississippi, 59. 
Juneau, Solomon, the pioneer of Milwaukee, 

'25- 

Kewaunee, an early " boom " town, 199. 
La Baye, French military station, 87. 
Labor troubles, 337. 
La Crosse, 351. 



Langlade, Charles de, partisan captain, 85; 
at La Baye, 87 ; at Green Bay, 100 ; in 
troubles of 1780, 113; his fur trading, 117. 
La Poinle, trading post at, 129. 
La Salle, Robert Cavelier de, in Wisconsin, 
64; voyage in the Griffin, 65; stormy 
voyage of, 66. 
Le Sueur, Wisconsin vojageur, 71 ; a notable 

character, 78; his explorations, 79. 
Lead mines opened, 161. 
Lewis, James T., governor, 289. 
Lnicoln, Abraham, captain in Black Hawk 

War, 1S5 ; his call to arms, 274. 
Linctot, Godefroy, partisan captain, no. 
Lumbering interests of Wisconsin, 332. 
Madison selected as the capital, 200; capitol 
erected at, 203 ; life at, 204 ; present con- 
dition of, 352. 
Madison (.juard, The, tenders its services to 

the governor, 274. 
Man, Prehistoric, in Wisconsin, 13. 
Manufacturing interests, 336. 
Marin, French partisan captain, 83. 
Marquette, Father, in Wisconsin, 57; dis- 
covers the Mississippi, 59; publishes ac- 
count of expedition, 60; at Green Bay, 62. 
McDermott, Daniel, color sergeant; his 

bravery, 308. 
Menard, Rene', missionary to Wisconsin In- 
dians, 40, 46; death of, 46. 
Milwaukee, First settler in, 124; made a trad- 
ing post by Jacques Vieau, 124; Solomon 
Juneau at, 125; its Indian trade, 157; 
action of bankers, 2S2 ; population of, 350; 
its enterprise, 351. 
Milwaukee River, La Salle in, 67. 
Mirandeau, Jean Baptiste, first settler in 

Milwaukee, 124. 
Mitchell, Andrew, and his Bank, 219. 
" Monks of Monk Hall," 238. 
Mormoiiism in Wisconsin, 224 
Mounds and mound-builders in Wisconsin, 

'4- 
Nicolet, Jean, first white man in Wisconsin, 

19; his expedition, 23; mission to the 

Winnebagoes, 30; his long journey, 35. 
Northwest Company, The, formed, 131. 
Northwest Territory, Division of, 195. 
Nuttall, Thomas, heads a scientific exploia- 

tion in Wisconsin, 134. 
" Old .\be," the Wisconsin war eagle, 316. 
Oshkosh, a famous camping ground foi 

voyngcurs, 32, 351. 
Pepin, Lake, Perrot at, 76. 
Perrot, Nicholas, trader, ni Wisconsin, 55; 

appointed " commandant of the West," 



INDEX. 



389 



71; at Green Bay, 72; his stockade fort, 
76 ; erects Fort Antoine, 76. 

Pontiac, his war, 96. 

Population, 342. 

Portage lines and carriers, 125-129. 

Prairie du Chien, fur trading station, 105 ; 
captured by the British, 136; engagement 
at, 145 ; occupied by Americans, 153 ; as a 
trading station, 158; in the Winnebago 
war, 168. 

Radisson and Groseilliers in Wisconsin, 37- 

45- 
Racine, 351. 
Railroads in Wisconsin, 262 ; Land grants 

to, 263, 339. 
Randall, Alexander W., war governor, 270: 

issues his proclamation, 274; calls special 

session of Legislature, 281 ; his record, 285. 
Reaume, Judge Charles, at Green Bay, 150. 
Red Bird, the Winnebago, 168, 175; death 

of, 176. 
Religious denominations and colleges, 361. 
Robertson, Samuel, his voyage, 115. 
Rogers, Major Robert, takes possession of 

Wisconsin, 90. 
St. Cosme, Father, at Green Bay, 80. 
Saint Lusson, The Sieur, in Wisconsin, 55 ; 

makes a treaty with the Indians, 55. 
Sac and Fox cession to United States, 131. 
Salomon, Governor, 287. 
Sheboygan, 353. 
Sinclair, Captain Patrick, makes treaty v/ith 

the Indians, 117. 
State Board of charities and reform, 364. 
State university, The, 359. 
Stillman's Creek, Battle of, 1S5. 
Strang, James Jesse, " King Strang," 224; 

his death, 229. 
Superior, Lake, visited by fur-traders, 20. 
Tallmadge, Nathaniel P., territorial governor, 

230. 
Tecumseh's war, 134. 
Twentieth Wisconsin Regiment at Prairie 

Grove, 300. 
Twiggs, General David E.; his record in 

Wisconsin, 273. 
VeteranSjHome at Waupaca, the, 366. 
Vieau, Jacques, establishes trading post at 

Milwaukee, 124. 
Whistler, Major William, in the Winnebago 

War, 174. 
Williams, Eleazer, spy, missionary and Indian 

agent, 178; claims to be Louis the Seven- 
teenth of France, 179; his death, iSo. 
Winnebago Indians, visited by Nicolet, 30; 

war with, 167. 



Winnebago, Lake, visited by traders, 20; 
Indian villages on, 31 ; Nicolet's voyage 
on, 32. 

Wisconsin Heights, Battle of, 188. 

" Wisconsin Phalanx," The, a Fourierite 
organization, 222. 

Wisconsin, a Laurentian island, 11 ; geologic 
development of, 12 ; prehistoric man in, 
13; mounds of, 14; Indian tribes of, 16, 
18; first white visitor to, 19 ; early explor- 
ers in, 30-35, 38-45 ; Jesuit missionaries 
and French explorers in, 40-88 ; six port- 
age routes in, 82 ; fall of French power in, 
SS ; British possession of, 89 ; formally 
handed over to England, 96; early agri- 
culture in, 98 ; British and American rival- 
ries in, 107-118; claimed by United States, 
121; becomes American territory, 123; 
Sac and Fox cession of lands, 131 ; era of 
real American domination begins, 131 ; va- 
cillating American policy in, 135 ; in the 
War of 1812, 135-147; French and Ameri- 
can jealousies in, 152; Indian trade in, 
155, 159; trading villages in, 160; mining 
operations, 161 ; growing colonization of 
the State, 163; Indian troubles, 167; the 
Winnebago War, 170; close of Winnebago 
War, 177; Indian removals and reserva- 
tions, 177; Black Hawk War, 180-191 ; 
increased interest in after the Black Hawk 
War, 191 ; in division of Northwest Ter- 
ritory, 195; Wisconsin Territory organized, 
196; Judge Doty names it, 197; first ter- 
ritorial governor appointed, 197 ; first legis- 
lative session, 198; struggle over location 
of capital, 198; Madison selected, 200; 
life in the Territory, 205-213; boundary 
discussions, 215; emigrations to, 221; 
Fourierism in, 222; Mormonism in, 224; 
constitutional conventions, 231; Wiscon- 
sin admitted as a State, 231 ; political troub- 
les, 240-246 ; Fugitive Slave Act in, 247 ; 
Internal improvements in, 254; railway 
companies in, 262; Land grants, 263; po- 
litical partisanship, 26S ; in the Civil War, 
270-329; part played by the Wisconsin 
regiments in the Civil War, 291-329 ; cost 
of the war to the State, 330 ; growth in 
resources and industry, 331 ; Indians in 
the State, 354; educational interests, 35S; 
the State University, 359; religious soci- 
eties and schools, 361 ; the State Histor- 
ical Society, 362 ; charitable and reforma- 
tory institution, 363 ; Wisconsin's destiny, 
367- 



THE STORY OF THE STATES. 

KDITED BY KLBRIDGE S. BROOKS. 

The Story of Wisconsin is the fifth issue in the 
proposed series of graphic narrations descriptive 
of the rise and development of the American 
Union. The State of Wisconsin has a stirrino; 
and pecuHar history. The child of the coureur dc 
bois and of the Jesuit missionary its beginnings 
were as dramatic and picturesque as its present is 
progressive and practical. The story of the State 
has never yet been fully or fitly told, and the posi- 
tion of its author as the secretary of the State His- 
torical Society peculiarly fits him to produce a 
volume every way suited to the needs and the 
expectations of the people of Wisconsin. 

In the production of so comprehensive a series 
as is this Story of the States, it is as wise as it is 
necessary to make haste slowly. The American 
Commonwealths are adding important paragraphs 
to their story every day, and each story needs to 
be fully as well as concisely told. 

Great care is being exercised in the selection of 
writers for the entire series and the expressions of 
popular and critical approval of the plan adopted 
are gratefully acknowledged by the publishers. 

This fifth volume will be speedily followed by 
two others already in press : 



THE STORY Of THH STATES. 

The Stor\' of Kentucky by Emma M. Connelly. 

The Story of Massachusetts by Kdward Everett 
Hale. 

The Story of Colorado by Charles .M. Skinner 
and the Story of New Mexico by Horatio O. Ladd 
will also be among the early issues. 

Among the other volumes secured for the series, 
several of which are already well toward completion, 
are : 



The Story of California . . . . 


I!y 


The Story of Virginia . . . . 


15y 


The Story of Conncciiciit 


l!y 


The Story of Missouri 


l!y 


The Story of Texas 


IJy 


The Story of Maryland . 


By 


The Story of Delaware . 


]3y 


The Story of the Indian Territory . 


l!y 


The Story of Michigan . 


l!y 


The Story of the District of Columbia 


l!y 


The Story of Oregon 


l!y 


The Story of Maine 


liy 


The Story of Pennsylvania 


];y 


The Story of Kansas 


];y 


The Story of Mississippi 


Jiy 


The Story of Florida 


Kv 


'I'he Story of Alabama . 


■ i^y 


'I'he Story of Tennessee . 


By 


The Story of Arkansas . 


By 


The Story of New Jersey 


• i^y 



Noah Brooks 
Marion IIarland 
Sidney Luska 
Jessie Benton Fkemoni- 
E. S. Nadal 
John R. Corvki.i, 
Olive Thorne Mii.lkk 
George E. Foster 
Charles Moore 
Edmund Alton 
Mar(jaret E. Sangster 
Almon Gunnison 
Olive Risley Seward 
Willis J. Aurott 
Laura F. Hinsdale 
S. G. W. Benjamin 
Annie Sawyer Downs 
Laura C. Hollowav 
Octave Thanet 
Wm. Elliot Gkikfis 



The stories will be issued at the uniform net 
subscrijDtion price of $1.50 per volume. Announc- 
ments of additions to the series will be made in 
succeeding volumes. Inquiries respecting the 
series may be addressed to the publishers, 

D. LOTIIROP COMPANY, l^.OSTON. 



THE STORY OF THE STATES. 

{Already Published.) 

The Story of New York, by Elbridge S. Brooks. 
The Story of Ohio, by Alexander Black, 
The Story of Louisiana, by Maurice Thompson. 
The Story of Vermont, by John L. Heaton. 

8vo, each volume fully illustrated, price $1.50. 

The initial volumes of this new and notable contribution to 
American history have been so favorably received that little 
doubt can remain as to the need of the series they inaugurate 
and the permanent popularity of the style adopted for their 
telling. 

"Of the series instructively," says the Boston Globe, "one 
can hardly say too much in praise. In a new field it contrib- 
utes essentially and influentially to the right estimation of 
national character and of the mission of the future." 

I — NEW YORK. Every American should read this book. 
It is not dull history. It is story based on historic facts. 
"With all the fascinations of a story," says the Journal of 
Education, "it still remains loyal to historic facts and the 
patriotic spirit." 

" A valuable contribution to picturesque history." — Boston Advertiser. 

" Vivid, picturesque and entertaining." — Mitnieapolis Tribune. 

"To one familiar with the history of New York State this book will be exceedinstly refresh- 
ing and interesting. Mr. Brooks is an entertaining writer and his Story of New York will be 
read with avidity. He is no novice in historic writing. This book will add to his reputation 
and will find its way into thousands of private libraries." — Utica Press. 

II — OHIO. This volume has been received with the most 
enthusiastic approval. No existing work occupies precisely the 
same field. It is at once picture, text-book and story. Mr, 
Black's skill in condensing into so brief a compass so much 
valuable matter, his deft handling of all the varying phases of 
Ohio's story and his picturesque presentation of what in other 
hands might be but the dry details of history have secured 
alike popular recognition and popular approval. 

" To incorporate within some three hundred pages, even an intelligible sketch of the historj- 
of Ohio is something of a literary feat, and to make such a sketch interesting is still more 
difficult. Mr. Black, however, has succeeded in doing this. . . . His book is welcome 
and valuable and is well adapted for popular use and reference." — New York Tribune. 



— .• ; THE STORY OF THE STATES. 

"One of the warm, lively, picturesque narratives, lighted up with bits of personal, human 
interest and clear glimpses of a people's every-day life which will closely interest the general 
reader. " — Chicago Times. 

Ill — LOUISIANA. Mr. Thompson's brilliant and enter- 
taining outline of the history of one of the most picturesque 
and romantic States in all the sisterhood of American Common- 
wealths is full of grace and vigor, yoked to characteristic 
description and a pleasing presentation of facts. It is, says 
the Critic, " A wonderfully picturesque account of a land 
abounding in interest of every sort : landscapes, hereditary 
singularities, mixed nationality, legends and thrilling episodes." 

" The manner in which this story is told by Mr. Thompson leaves little to be desired. . . . 
He has made an absorbing and stirring, but at the same time most thoroughly practical and 
instructive book." — Boston Traveller. 

"There is no lack of fascinating and romantic material in the history of Louisiana without 
going beyond the barest facts, as indeed Mr. Thompson shows." — The Nation. 

" An absorbing romance and at the same time a practical and instructive histor>'." — Jour- 
nal of Education. 

" Mr. Thompson's prose is full of the lire and spirit of poetry, and the stor>' could scarcely 
be told better or more interestingly. The writing is free from all prejudices and can be read 
with a like interest by the people of Illinois and those of Louisiana. ' — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 

" The story is picturesque beyond all possibility of greater and more vivid heightening. . . 
The book is one of great popular interest and it is rarely that a work of historical accuracy is 
presented in a garb so graceful and alluring." — Newark Daily Advertiser. 

IV — VERMONT. Mr. Heaton has not only made a clear, 
entertaining and practical story of the Green Mountain State, 
but has produced a book that stands, at present, without a com- 
petitor, no history of Vermont having been published for over 
forty years. Every Vermont family and every family able to 
trace its origin to the Mountain Commonwealth should find 
pride and pleasure in this story. 

' A substantial contribution to our historical literature. Mr. Heaton has told his stor\- with 
spirit and vigor and technical historical accuracy. The book h.is the charm of a well-written 
romance and the value of a solid work of history." — Chicago Tribune. 

"A volume that should attract the attention of all lovers of every phase of our nation's 
.story and every admirer of sturdy, persistent, devoted and patriotic endeavor." — LincinmUt 
Enquirer. 

" Not a p.ige is dull, tedious or other than lucid and lively, so charming is the style and so 
fluid is the narrative, condensed without being superficial." — Christian Kegister. 

"Mr. Heaton's style is manly, unaffected, simjile and direct, full of pr.ictical pur]iose 
lighted with the skill of a humorist." — Louis7'ille Courier-Journal. 

" It is as readable as a novel — much more so tlftn the average analytical novel of the period 
— and should be widely read." — St. Johuslmry Ke/>ul>lican. 



I 



